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1AC Cyber
1AC Plan
The United States federal government should substantially
increase its non-military engagement with the Peoples Republic
of China by negotiating a Mutual Forbearance Agreement for
cyberspace, including an offer to share attribution technology
with the Peoples Republic of China.
1AC Inherency
Contention One is Inherency
Ongoing engagement over cyber issues proves diplomatic
support expanding these dialogues is key.
Segal 16 (Adam; Segal is the Ira A. Lipman chair in emerging technologies and national security and director of
the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations; 9/28/16; The U.S.-China Cyber
Espionage Deal One Year Later; http://blogs.cfr.org/cyber/2016/09/28/the-u-s-china-cyber-espionage-deal-one-year-
later/; CFR)
A year ago, presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping stood next to each other and declared that neither the
U.S. nor Chinese governments will conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual
property, including trade secrets or other confidential business information for commercial advantage. Despite a
great deal of warranted skepticism about the agreement initially, much of the heat surrounding
cybersecurity in the bilateral relationship has dissipated. It is Russia, and the alleged hacks of the
Democratic National Committee and World Anti Doping Agency, that now dominates the headlines and drives much of
U.S. cybersecurity policy discussion. When he announced the agreement, President Obama warned We will be watching
carefully to make an assessment as to whether progress has been made in this area. The available evidence
suggests that the overall level of Chinese-backed hacking has gone down. FireEye released a report in
June 2016 that claimed the the number of network compromises by the China-based hacking groups it tracks dropped
from 60 in February 2013 to less than 10 by May 2016. Absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of absence,
and the Chinese may be becoming more stealthy and sophisticated in their attacks. Indeed FireEye noted that decline in
number of attacks may be accompanied by a rise in the sophistication of attacks. U.S. Assistant Attorney General John
Carlin confirmed the companys findings that attacks were less voluminous but more focused and calculated. Chinese
hackers may have shifted their focus to other targets. Kaspersky Labs reported Chinese hacking of Russian defense,
nuclear, and aviation industries rose nearly threefold in the first seven months of 2016 A month after signing the
in November 2015,
agreement with the United States, China inked a similar deal with the United Kingdom, and,
China, Brazil, Russia, the United States, and other members of the Group of Twenty accepted the norm
against conducting cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property. The United States and China have also
held two round of cyber talks between the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Chinese
Ministry of Public Security (MPS), the first in December 2015, the second in June 2016. At these
meetings, Washington and Beijing agreed on the guidelines for requesting assistance on
cybercrime, discussed establishing a hotline, and conducted tabletop
exercises. In August, the Ministry of Public Security reported that the hotline between DHS
and MPS was up and running. The shift in Chinese hacking seems to have been driven by external and
internal forces. Over a two year span, the United States mounted an aggressive naming and shaming campaign, indicted
five Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) hackers, and, in the weeks before the September summit, hinted it would sanction
Chinese individuals or entities that benefited from cyber-enabled theft. Xi Jinpings anti-corruption campaign and the
clamp down on criminal use of state resources as well as efforts to modernize the PLA and bring cyber operations under
more centralized control may have also produced the decline in hacking. Former National Security Agency official Dave
Aitel argues that the Chinese move to a higher grade of hacking, and increased capabilities
across the board, make it more likely that the United States and China will be able
to cooperate in cyberspace. As Aitel puts it, You dont have to hack EVERYTHING if you can hack
ANYTHING, and this allows for collaboration on areas of shared interest. I am less optimistic. Beijing
and Washington do have shared interests in cybersecuritypreventing the proliferation of
capabilities to non-state actors; limiting attacks that threaten global financial networks and the integrity of the internet
but it is very difficult to convert these shared concerns into concrete cooperation. Moreover,
strategic mistrust is high between the two sides, and they remain divided over many other digital issues, including the free
flow of information, internet governance, data localization, and how to best secure information technology products and
supply chains. But Aitel is right that cooperation would certainly be nearly impossible if the high rates of theft of
intellectual property were continuing. Lets
hope that the attacks on the private sector remain low, and that the
United States and China can build on the agreement in other areas of
cyberspace.
The Mar a Lago summit thumps every DA it established a road
map for cyber negotiations but concrete agreements are still
needed to ensure action.
He 4/14 (Yafei; former vice-minister of Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council, and former vice-
minister of Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs; 4/14/17; Meeting trumps doubters, lays road map;
http://www.ecns.cn/voices/2017/04-14/253427.shtml; China Daily)
President Xi Jinping and his U.S. counterpart Donald Trumprecently held an important meeting at
Mar-a-Lago, Florida, which drew the attention of the international community for several
reasons. First, the two leaders reached a strategic consensus on the future of Sino-
U.S. relations based on the principle of no confrontation, no conflict, mutual respect and
win-win cooperation. Within this framework, they initiated a comprehensive dialogue
mechanism that includes diplomatic and security dialogue, comprehensive economic
dialogue, law enforcement and cyber security dialogue, and dialogue on social and people-
to-people exchanges. Before the meeting, there were uncertainties, even worries, about the direction the China-
U.S. relationship would take after Trump became U.S. president and given the burning issues of the U.S.' trade deficit, the
yuan's exchange rate, and the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue and the South China Sea. The reality is, Chinaand the
U.S. have plenty of converging interests, both bilateral and international, despite not seeing eye-
to-eye on everything. The key to a steady and sound relationship is reaching a
comprehensive strategic understanding of the overall direction of bilateral ties, instead of being
obsessed with one single issue. Second, the Mar-a-Lago meeting, where the two leaders compared
notes on each other's development strategies and agreed to expand cooperation on various
economic and financial issues, has contributed to keeping Sino-U.S. economic ties on an even
keel and given the world economy a much-needed helping hand. That the two largest economies have
agreed to strengthen economic cooperation, instead of fighting trade wars, is in itself no small feat. The
agreements the two sides reached on cooperative measures in bilateral and global economic fields are impressive,
because they were achieved against the backdrop of faltering global growth, increasing financial risks amid high
turbulence in global capital movement and rising protectionism in some advanced economies. It seems Trump's
"America First" policy does not necessarily mean "China Last". In fact, his "America First" policy can succeed
only through cooperation with China. U.S. officials have often mentioned their country's trade deficit ($347
billion last year) to highlight the imbalance in China-U.S. trade. But deficit and surplus are the two parts of trade, and the
U.S. has to find ways to reduce it and restore the balance in trade, rather than adopting a protectionist trade policy. Xi
said at Mar-a-Lago that the two countries, among other things, should consider deepening
cooperation in infrastructure construction and energy. In infrastructure, China has the advantage of
capital, equipment and capability, and therefore can help the U.S. to improve its infrastructure. On the energy front, the
U.S. could export shale oil and gas to China that has a huge demand for energy. Besides, the U.S. ought to consider lifting
the ban on exports of dual-use goods to China. And third, the
two leaders paid special attention to
regional security and world peace. Media reports say Xi and Trump talked at length about
regional security, including the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue. Therefore, it is not a good sign that the U.S.
is talking about a military resolution to the peninsula issue and has moved extra military equipment and personnel,
including aircraft carrier groups, into the waters near the peninsula. The U.S. should realize saber rattling will only lead to
war not peace. We strongly urge all parties to stop taking actions that will compromise regional security. We also urge
them to seriously consider China's recent proposal of "dualsuspension" to create conditions for restarting negotiations,
especially the Six-Party Talks. East Asian countries, as well as those countries that have interests in the region need to
adopt Xi's new security concept based on cooperative and comprehensive security, rather than seeking absolute security at
the expense of others. The Mar-a-Lago meeting has provided guidance on how to manage
China-U.S. relations and drawn a clear road map to achieve this goal. The tone and
direction have thus been set and now we need to "roll up our sleeves" to concretize the
work cut out for us at the meeting.
1AC Attribution
Contention Two is Attribution
Cyberattacks on China are increasing current attribution fails.
Reuters 16 (Reuters; international news agency; 11/29/16; Chinese See Almost 1,000 Percent Increase in Cyber
Attacks; http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/chinese-see-almost-1-000-percent-increase-cyber-attacks-n689466;
NBC) *edited for offensive language
Cyber attacks on Chinese companies have soared in the past two years, according to a survey,
with new technologies that connect household items to the internet and allow them to
receive and send data seen as particularly vulnerable. The average number of cyber
attacks detected by companies in mainland China and Hong Kong grew 969 percent
between 2014 and 2016. The number of attacks averaged more than 7 a day for each of the survey's 440
China-based respondents around half of the global average of 13. However, the average number of attacks
fell by 3 percent globally over the last two years, and 30 percent since 2015, in contrast to
the rise in China. China's rapid adoption of new consumer and industrial technology for
the 'Internet of Things (IoT)' era may be part of the reason. PwC said such connected devices are the leading
targets of cyber-attacks. "IoT devices in general have not paid attention to cyber security ," said
Marin Ivezic, a partner on cyber security at PwC in Hong Kong. "In China and Hong Kong ... we have more
adoption than anywhere else in the world," he said, noting China was also one of the biggest
manufacturers of these items. Chinese-made connected home devices such as webcams with
security loopholes that gave way to botnet malwares were blamed by security researchers
for a massive cyber attack in the US last month that temporarily [shut-down]
major internet sites. The Chinese companies surveyed had cut their cybersecurity
budget by 7.6 percent in 2016 compared with flat global spending. Thirty four percent of them identified
competitors as a source of attacks, a rate higher than anywhere else in the world. The PwC survey does not
track the country of origin of the attacks, which Ivezic said is "almost impossible."
The drop in the global number of cyber attacks did not reflect a safer
environment, he said, but was rather the result of more sophisticated cyber
criminals who more selective in who they targeted.
China will retaliate to perceived US intrusions without

attribution technology nationalism and regime legitimacy
ensure escalation.
Harold et al. 16 (Scott Warren Harold, Martin C. Libicki, Astrid Stuth Cevallos; Harold is associate director
of the RAND Center for Asia Pacific Policy, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation, and a member of the Pardee
RAND Graduate School faculty. He specializes in Chinese foreign policy, East Asian security, and international affairs;
Libicki is an adjunct management scientist at the RAND Corporation, a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School,
and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the U.S. Naval Academy; Cevallos is a Project Associate at the RAND
Corporation; 2016; Getting to Yes with China in Cyberspace;
http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1300/RR1335/RAND_RR1335.pdf; RAND)
We interpreted these reactions as evidence that China does not yet have an explicit cyber-deterrence
posture. The classic notion of deterrence has four prerequisites: thresholds, attribution, credibility, and capability (to
respond). Furthermore, an effective deterrence policy requires that these prerequisites be met
in the view of potential attackers. For example, even if the target thinks it has a capability to
attribute, if the potential attacker thinks that the target of the attack lacks confidence in
its own attribution, deterrence suffers. If the Chinese had a serious cyber-deterrence
posture, the rest of world would not have to guess what it is; it would know . Note that this is
different from saying that Chinas cyber-deterrence posture is simply reflective of Chinas overall deterrence posture.
Overall, China maintains a substantial degree of ambiguity as a strategy to magnify its influence and ability to compel
respect. Nonetheless, China has made clear that its forbearance has limits24 it simply declines to specify their exact
location, instead favoring an approach of hinting at direction and proximity and allowing the target of deterrence to infer
that it is running increasing risks of a kinetic Chinese reaction. In the cyber domain, in contrast, China
has not
clarified to any meaningful extent its ability to detect actions that cross its (unstated) red
lines, declaims a nigh-absolute degree of doubt about the possibility of attribution in
cyberspace, and has expressed no clear statement about its own willingness to respond to
cyberattacks. Indeed, China has gone far as to lay down somewhat costly markers that it may have to walk back from
if it ever decides that it does want to respond to a cyberattack either through a cyber or kinetic response. As noted earlier,
if China doubts its ability to definitively attribute an attack but perceives an
intrusion as having originated from the United States, it will have to carefully
weigh several factors in its response, such as weighing its its lack of confidence in its own
attribution capabilities and its weaker power vis--vis the United States against its concerns
that U.S. actions might be oriented toward affecting a qualitative change in the
overall balance of power. Additionally, CPC leaders would have to consider any
possible consequences for domestic regime stability. Several additional considerations are
likely to shape Chinas cyber-deterrence posture: Chinas leaders are acutely aware of the vulnerable state of the
countrys network infrastructure. Compared with the everyday risks to Chinas infrastructure (entire provinces have been
knocked offline because of the misadventures of computer games),25 risks originating from overseas may appear less
pressing than they do in the United States. At the same time, ifChina is perceived to have suffered a
cyberattack, the political pressures that the CPC leadership may find
themselves under could be equal to or even greater than those that the United
States experiences, since the regime depends more heavily on nationalism and
because the risks to any leader for not acting could imperil his or her own
position (since authority is more personalized and less institutionalized in China than in the United States).26
Chinas perspective on deterrence is more holistic than the U.S. perspective (as argued in Chapter Two). China lags
the United States in cyberspace policymaking in terms of high-level statements , publicly
issued documents, and the establishment of policy decisionmaking organs. Overall, those respondents who ventured an
opinion on the matter believed the United States was far ahead of China in terms of its cyberwar capability.27 One
believed that China was catching up. Two
respondents voiced fears that the United States
would target Chinas nuclear command-and-control infrastructure.28
That escalates to nuclear war.

Littlefield & Lowther 15 (Alex & Adam; Lowther is Director, School of Advanced Nuclear Deterrence
Studies, Air Force Global Strike Command; Littlefield is a professor at Feng Chia University; 8/11/15; Taiwan and the
Prospects for War Between China and America; http://thediplomat.com/2015/08/taiwan-and-the-prospects-for-war-
between-china-and-america/; The Diplomat)
For the United States and its allies and partners in Asia, Chinas aggressive efforts to assert questionable claims in the
South and East China Sea, enforce a disputed Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), build the rocket/missile and naval
capabilities needed to invade Taiwan, and build a substantial ballistic missile capability all work to create a situation
where conflict between the U.S. and the PRC could occur and rapidly escalate .
Given that American political and military leaders have a poor understanding of
Chinese ambitions and particularly their opaque nuclear thinking, there is ample reason to be
concerned that a future conflict could escalate to a limited nuclear conflict . Thus, it is
worth taking a look at the PRC with an eye toward offering insight into Chinese motivation and thinking when it comes to
how a possible crisis over Taiwan could escalate to the use of nuclear weapons. Chinese Capabilities In their latest
estimate, Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris assess that the Second Artillery Corps possesses forty long-range
nuclear missiles that can strike the United States if fired from Chinas eastern seaboard and an additional twenty that
could hit Hawaii and Alaska. The challenge for China, is reaching the East Coast home to the nations capital and largest
economic centers. To overcome this challenge China is also developing its JL-2 submarine-launched ballistic missile
(SLBM) which is a sea-based variant of the DF-31 land-mobile long-range missile that will go to sea on Jin-class
submarines. China may also be developing a new
mobile missile, the DF-41, which will carry multiple
warheads, giving the Chinese a way to potentially defeat an American ballistic missile
defense system. It is worth noting that the quantity, though not the quality, of Chinas nuclear arsenal
is only limited by its dwindling stock of weapons grade plutonium. This raises the question; to
what end is China developing and deploying its nuclear arsenal? Chinese Motivation The textbook answer is
straightforward. China
seeks a secure second (retaliatory) strike capability that
will serve to deter an American first strike. As China argues, it has a no-nuclear-
first policy which makes its arsenal purely defensive while its other
capabilities such as cyber are offensive. Potential nuclear adversaries including Russia, India, and the
United States are fully aware that Chinas investment in advanced warheads and ballistic missile delivery systems bring
Delhi, Moscow, and, soon, Washington within reach of the East Wind. While not a nuclear peer competitor to either
Russia or the U.S., China is rapidly catching up as it builds an estimated 30-50 new nuclear
warheads each year. While American leaders may find such a sentiment unfounded, the PRC has a
strong fear that the United States will use its nuclear arsenal as a tool to blackmail
(coerce) China into taking or not taking a number of actions that are against its
interests. Chinas fears are not unfounded. Unlike China, the United States maintains an
ambiguous use-policy in order to provide maximum flexibility. As declassified government
documents from the 1970s clearly show, the United States certainly planned to use overwhelming nuclear
force early in a European conflict with the Soviet Union . Given American nuclear superiority and its
positioning of ballistic missile defenses in Asia, ostensibly to defend against a North Korean attack, China sees its
position and ability to deter the United States as vulnerable. Possible Scenario While there are
several scenarios where conflict between the United States and China is possible, some analysts believe that a conflict over
Taiwan remains the most likely place where the PRC and the U.S. would come to blows. Beijing is aware that any coercive
action on its part to force Taiwan to accept its political domination could incur the wrath of the United States. To prevent
the U.S. from intervening in the region, China will certainly turn to its anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) strategy,
beginning with non-lethal means and non-lethal threats to discourage the American public from supporting the use of
force in support of Taiwan. If thwarted in its initial efforts to stop Chinese aggression against Taiwan, the United States
A kinetic response to a
may be tempted to resort to stronger measures and attack mainland China.
cyber-attack, for example, although an option, would very likely lead to escalation on the
part of the Chinese. Given the regimes relative weakness and the probability
that American attacks (cyber and conventional) on China will include strikes against
PLA command and control (C2) nodes, which mingle conventional and nuclear C2, the Chinese
may escalate to the use of a nuclear weapon (against a U.S. carrier in Chinas self-declared
waters for example) as a means of forcing de-escalation . In the view of China, such a strike
would not be a violation of its no-first-use policy because the strike would
occur in sovereign Chinese waters, thus making the use of nuclear weapons a
defensive act. Since Taiwan is a domestic matter, any U.S. intervention would be viewed as an act of aggression.
This, in the minds of the Chinese, makes the United States an outside aggressor, not China. It is also important to
remember that nuclear weapons are an asymmetric response to American conventional superiority. Given
that
China is incapable of executing and sustaining a conventional military campaign against
the continental United States, China would clearly have an asymmetry of interest and
capability with the United States far more is at stake for China than it is for the United
States. In essence, the only effective option in retaliation for a successful U.S. conventional
campaign on Chinese soil is the nuclear one . Without making too crude a point, the nuclear option
provides more bang for the buck, or yuan. Given that mutually assured destruction (MAD) is
not part of Chinas strategic thinking in fact it is explicitly rejected the
PRC will see the situation very differently than the U nited States.
The aff is key to distinguish US attacks from other actors its

the only way to get China to say yes.
The Chinese we talked to rarely bothered to make even a pro forma denial that China conducts cyber espionage in general
or economically motivated cyber espionage in particular. Chinese interviewees believe that the United States has
militarized cyberspaceand they are determined not to be left too far behind in what they
view as a competition (albeit one they regret taking place). The Chinese see cybersecurity talks as a way to appease
U.S. irritation more than to achieve anything specific. In contrast, the United States places a much higher emphasis on
using such dialogues to resolve cybersecurity issues. The Chinese do not appear to have a well-formed
set of demandsnot even a diminution of U.S. cyber espionagethat they would be willing to trade for any
significant cessation of economically motivated cyber espionage (much less all categories of cyber espionage). Thus, it is
difficult to see such cyber espionage as falling within the cyber trade space. The Chinese do not
accept the U.S. proposition that a country has a right to unilaterally respond to cyberattacks qua the Law of Armed
Conflict. One idea we mooted was for bothcountries to abjure attacks on each others
critical infrastructure. There was considerable receptivity to this proposal, even
when coupled with the proviso that both sides would also have to abjure cyber espionage
on such targets. The sticking point was attribution . The United States believes it can catch China
cheating and would like some process by which cheating, once discovered, is
acknowledged so that some consequences (other than merely reputational ones) would
follow. China believes it cannot catch the cheating by the United States and is
apprehensive of any agreement that would put them at a corresponding
disadvantage. Thus, any serious agreement would need a process that both
sides could trust and/or some way to increase Chinas confidence in its own
attribution capabilities. This is a very difficult challenge but not, in our opinion, an absolutely hopeless one,
provided that both sides were to agree to work on it in good faith. Were the United States and China to do so, we provide
an initial set of thoughts that could be explored about how to move forward in this area. It is not clear, however, that China
wants to get to yes on the issuei.e., truly resolve it by establishing mutually agreed-upon and respected norms with
respect to targeting in cyberspaceso much as it wants simply to get away from the issue. If that assessment is correct,
then the United States is not likely to see its recently negotiated agreement with China on cyberspace lead to lasting
changes in Chinese actions in cyberspace.
Trump bolsters the necessity of norms ambiguity collapses

cyber-alliances and escalates arms races.
Gady 1/16 (Franz-Stefan; Associate Editor with The Diplomat, Senior Fellow with the EastWest Institute;
1/16/17; Trump and Offensive Cyber Warfare; http://thediplomat.com/2017/01/trump-and-offensive-cyber-warfare/;
The Diplomat)
The concern is that while a

more aggressive U.S. cyber policy may deter some adversaries, it can also
backfire and accelerate the emerging cyber-arms race. Given the fact that cyber-weapons-
programs originate from the world of intelligence and are cloaked in secrecy, their capabilities are largely
unknown, thus fostering greater uncertainty for policy makers. This would be further
accentuated should Mr. Trump choose to disregard continuing U.S. government efforts to help
shape international norms of behavior in cyberspace and develop confidence building
measures to de-escalate cyberspace tensions with countries like China and Russia, the United
States most capable cyber adversaries. For example, the U.S. would be well served to maintain its leadership role in the
United Nations Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on Developments in the Field of Information and
Telecommunications in the Context of International Security. Failing to promote a level of cooperation and foster globally
acceptable norms may in turn compel nations to build up their cyber weapons arsenals even further. Second, Trumps
rhetoric during his presidential campaign has left many allies concerned about the United States overall
defense commitment. At present, United States allies can no longer take for granted that they will be
shielded under the U.S. cyber umbrella, i.e. U.S. support in defending their networks paired with the threat of
retaliatory U.S. cyber strikes. This is accentuated by Trumps statements that underscore a lack of faith in alliances, with
demands that allies pay a greater share of the costs associated with security, paired with the president-elects overall
isolationist tendencies. Countries like Japan, the second most advanced ICT country after the United States, which until
now, have chosen not to develop their own offensive cyber capabilities, will have to rethink their stance. Moreover, Mr.
Trumps current ambiguity over U.S. defense commitments may in turn impact ongoing global
cooperation on offensive cyber capabilities, such as the five-eyes and intelligence partners,
Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and New Zealand. The level of interconnectivity in todays world effectively demands a
certain level of cooperation and knowledge share. Should the president-elect decide to reduce cooperation with current
allies, it may diminish not only the cyber deterrence capabilities of the United States, but also that of its closest
intelligence partners, which can hardly be in anyones national interest. In addition, if
the new administration
decides to abandon its leading role in trying to formulate norms of state behavior (the word norms has
thus far never been mentioned by Mr. Trump in the context of cybersecurity), while simultaneously accelerating the
buildup of offensive cyber capabilities, the result could be a more militarized cyberspace
with fewer rules. While the world is carefully watching what path the new administration will adopt,
offensive cyber capabilities will continue to expand. However, the United States runs the risk of accelerating
this cyber weapons race before adequate norms for their use are established.
Unpredictability paired with bellicosity is always a dangerous mix in global politics, but even more
troublesome in an increasingly militarized cyberspace.
Specifically, fading momentum from September fractures trust

that incentivizes offensive strategies and spills over to SCS
tensions.
Segal & Lan 16 (Adam & Tang; Segal is the Ira A. Lipman chair in emerging technologies and national
security and director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations; Lan is Deputy
Director at the Institute of Information and Social Development, China Institutes of Contemporary International
Relations; April 2016; Reducing and Managing U.S.-China Conflict in Cyberspace; U.S.-China Relations in Strategic
Domains; The National Bureau of Asian Research; NBR Special Report #57)
Although cyberspace
is an issue of increasing importance to the U.S.-China relationship, Beijing
and Washington still have significant differences over the free flow of information and the openness of
the Internet, cyberattacks and norms of behavior in cyberspace, Internet governance, and the security of supply chains
and information and communications equipment. As a result, each country is likely to see the other as an
important, if not the main, competitor to the pursuit of its interests in cyberspace. Yet despite the
gaps in their positions, and the hyperbolic rhetoric that often shows up in the media in both countries about cyberwar,
policymakers in Zhongnanhai and the White House appear committed to not letting cyber issues
derail the relationship. The September 2015 summit between Presidents Barack Obama and
Xi Jinping produced breakthrough agreements on several important cybersecurity measures. Both
sides pledged that neither countrys government will conduct or knowingly support
cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, including trade secrets or other confidential
business information, with the intent of providing competitive advantages to companies
or commercial sectors.1 Washington and Beijing also agreed to identify and endorse norms of behavior in
cyberspace and establish two high-level working groups and a hotline between the two sides. However, as President
Obama acknowledged following the summit in September, Our work is not yet done. I
believe we can expand our cooperation in this area.2 The U.S.-China cyber
agreement could be a model for future international discussions. China and the
United Kingdom, for example, reached a similar agreement, and in November 2015 China, Brazil, Russia, the United
States, and other members of the Group of Twenty (G-20) accepted the norm against conducting or supporting the cyber-
enabled theft of intellectual property.3 After a year of ups and down in the Sino-U.S. cybersecurity relationship, the
agreement signed by the two presidents may provide a mechanism to mediate conflict in the future. Failure
to
build on the agreement, however, could generate greater mistrust that spills
over into other aspects of the relationship. U.S. and Peoples Republic of China (PRC)
forces, for example, are in close contact in the South China Sea, and cyberattacks could quickly
escalate a stand-off and, through misperception or miscalculation, lead to military
conflict. Defense planners in both countries appear to assume that offense
dominates in cyberspace, and so there are strong incentives to strike first ,
further heightening the risk that a crisis could quickly escalate . A
cyberattack that causes damage or destruction could create domestic
demand for immediate action that both leaderships would have a hard time ignoring. Finding some
common ground and developing cooperative projects are necessary first steps to
reducing tensions in cyberspace. Both sides increasingly depend on digital
infrastructure for economic and national security and share a number of concerns. Globally, cyberattacks are
growing in frequency, scale, sophistication, and severity of impact. Cybercrime continues to riseMcAfee estimates that it
cost the global economy more than $400 billion in 2014and terrorists groups appear to be seeking the ability to launch
destructive cyberattacks.4 The
proliferation of cyberattack capabilities to nonstate actors that
are not easily deterred puts critical infrastructure in both China and the United
States at risk. There are also strong economic incentives for greater cooperation. The Chinese
and U.S. information and communications technology (ICT) markets are tightly linked, and both economies rely on the
security, integrity, and availability of global supply chains. While avoiding greater mistrust and preventing
virtual events from escalating into physical conflicts are essential , Beijing and Washington should
not stop there. They should also work together to identify positive goals . The growth of the Internet
has brought immense economic, political, social, and cultural benefits to both sides. Strategic cooperation in
cyberspace could result in further gains for China, the United States, and the rest of the
world.
Lack of attribution grants China plausible deniability allows

them to build up offensive capabilities which outmatch the US
and cause kinetic escalation.
Kihara 14 (Stacy A; BA candidate for Master of Arts in Security Studies (Homeland Security and Defense), Naval
Postgraduate School; December 2014; A RISING CHINA: SHIFTING THE ECONOMIC BALANCE OF POWER
THROUGH CYBERSPACE; http://calhoun.nps.edu/bitstream/handle/10945/44593/14Dec_Kihara_Stacy.pdf?
sequence=1)
Lowther et al., argue that China could use cyber

attacks against U.S. commercial lines of communication (LOC),
having potentially devastating effects on both the economy and national security . They state
that while closing sea and air LOCs to commercial traffic would clearly be seen as antagonistic and cause a loss of global
goodwill, cyber attacks aimed at commercial interests (LOCs) can serve much the same purpose without arousing the
same ire from the international community.285 The difficulty of attribution in cyberspace provides
China the ability to plausibly deny responsibility. Although China might consider
certain actions to be below the threshold of what could be considered the use of force or
an act of war, especially when denying responsibility, the United States has made clear in its Department of Defense
Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace that harmful action within the cyber domain can be met with a
parallel response in another domain.286 Should China be willing to use cyber power as a
coercive tool against the United States, it risks the potential for conflict. D.
POTENTIAL FOR CONFLICT Because of the newness of technology, the lack of agreement on
norms, and the potential to misidentify an espionage exploit as the opening phase of a
military action, cyber conflict entails a greater risk of miscalculation and inadvertent
escalation of conflict, states Lewis.287 While it would be naive to assume that nations would not preserve some
cyber capability for intelligence collection and to support military actions, lack of agreement on the acceptable use of cyber
capabilities plagues U.S.-China relations. The
United States considers Chinas cyber-enabled
economic espionage intolerable behavior not only because of the damage it does to the U.S. economy, but
also because of the ease at which a cyber exploit can become a cyber attack. The strategic
goal for China however, is to avoid conflict, viewing armed conflict as an indication of failure.288
According to Joshua Cooper Ramo, asymmetry represents the most efficient way to deal with the
incredibly complex security environment China inhabits. China is in the process of building the
largest asymmetric superpower in history.289 Ramo argues that true success to China is the ability to manipulate a
situation so effectively that the outcome favors Chinese interests in a way that enables China to acquire the power to avoid
conflict.290 Thomas validates this notion when he asserts that Chinas
persistent cyber reconnaissance
efforts against global powers indicate that China is trying to seek vulnerabilities that can
be exploited to achieve an economic or military victory.291 Despite Chinas desire to avoid conflict
and its assurance that it seeks a peaceful rise to great power status, its recurrent acts of aggression undermine its efforts to
build confidence among its regional neighbors and strategic partners.292 Lewis points out that Chinas
cyber
activities cannot be divorced from the larger security and political context in Asia, where
Chinese actions have alienated many of its neighbors and have increased tensions by
attempting to assert its regional authority.293 As a result, no matter what China does to
signal good intentions, Chinas aggressive behavior coupled with its strategic culture
of ambiguity, disinformation, and secrecy, make other nations skeptical of a peaceful
Chinese rise.294
Offensive cyber capabilities increase the chances of nuclear war

only norm building solves.
Gartzke & Lindsay 2/14 (Erik & Jon; Gartzke is a Professor of Political Science at UC San Diego;
Lindsay is assistant professor of digital media and global affairs at the University of Toronto Munk School of Global Affairs
at UC San Diego, former professor at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at UC San Diego, former
research scientist with the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, PhD in political science
from MIT; 2/14/17; Thermonuclear cyberwar;
https://academic.oup.com/cybersecurity/article/doi/10.1093/cybsec/tyw017/2996537/Thermonuclear-
cyberwar#64534865; Journal of Cyber Security, Vol 3, Issue 1, pp. 37-48)
Offensive cyber operations against NC3 raise the risk of nuclear war. They do so because
cyber operations and nuclear weapons are extreme complements regarding their informational
properties. Cyber operations rely on deception. Nuclear deterrence relies on clear
communication. In a brinksmanship crisis, the former undermines the latter. Nuclear crises
were rare events in Cold War history, thankfully. Today, the proliferation and modernization of nuclear weapons may
raise the risk slightly. Subversion of NC3 raises the danger of nuclear war slightly more. Cyberwar is not war per se,
but in rare circumstances it may make escalation to thermonuclear war more likely. NC3 is a
particularly attractive counterforce target because disruption can render the enemys arsenal less effective without having
to destroy individual platforms. US nuclear strategy in practice has long relied on counterforce capabilities (including
Canopy Wing) [48, 99]. Deterrence theorists expect this to undermine the credibility of the adversarys deterrent and
create pressures to move first in a conflict [100, 101]. If for some reason deterrence fails, however, countervalue strikes on
civilian population centers would be militarily useless and morally odious. Counterforce strikes, in contrast, aim at
preemptive disarmament or damage limitation by attacking the enemys nuclear enterprise. Counterforce capabilities are
designed for winning a nuclear war once over the brink, but their strategic purpose may still include warning if they can
somehow be made robust to revelation. During the Cold War, the United States found ways to inform the Soviet Union of
its counterforce ability to sink SSBNs, hit mobile ICBMs, and show off some electronic warfare capabilities without giving
away precise details [102]. This improved mutual recognition of US advantages and thus clearer assessment of the
consequences of conflict, but the military commitment problem was real nonetheless. The problem is particularly
pronounced for cyber disruption of NC3. As
one side builds more sophisticated NC3 to improve the
credibility of its nuclear warning, the other side engages in cyber operations to improve its
capacity for nuclear winning, thereby undermining the warning. The prohibitive cost of nuclear war
and the relative transparency of the nuclear balance has contributed to seven decades of
nuclear peace. If this is to continue, it will be necessary to find ways to maintain
transparency. If knowledge of a shift in relative power is concealed, then the deterrent effect of nuclear
capabilities is undermined. This will tend to occur in periods where concern over nuclear attack is heightened, such as in
the midst of a militarized crises. Yet there is no reason to believe that states will wait for a crisis before seeking to establish
advantageous positions in cyberspace. Indeed, given the intricate intelligence and planning required, offensive
cyber
preparations must precede overt aggression by months or even years. It is this erosion of the
bulwark of deterrence that is most troubling. What can be done? Arms control agreements to ban cyber
attacks on NC3 might seem attractive, but the cyber commitment problem also undermines institutional monitoring and
enforcement. Even where the United States would benefit from such an agreement by keeping this asymmetric capability
out of the hands of other states, it would still have strong incentives to prepare its own damage limitation options should
deterrence fail. Nevertheless, diplomatic initiatives to discuss the dangers of cybernuclear
interactions with potential opponents should be pursued. Even if cybernuclear dangers cannot be eliminated,
states should be encouraged to review their NC3 and ensure strict lines of control over any offensive cyber operations at
that level.
Offensive realism doesnt apply to cyberspace empirics prove

norm setting works.
Thomas 16 (Elizabeth; PhD candidate at Australian National University; 8/28/16; US-China Relations in
Cyberspace: The Benefits and Limits of a Realist Analysis; http://www.e-ir.info/2016/08/28/us-china-relations-in-
cyberspace-the-benefits-and-limits-of-a-realist-analysis/; E-International Relations)
Relations between the US and China indeed have been marked by fear and mistrust.
Growing concerns about competitive advantage have exacerbated that mistrust, along
with ongoing intelligence activities and political rhetoric. China is suspicious that the US
is using its dominance in cyberspace to undermine other states , which suggests a sense of
vulnerability, and US has a deep sense of unease about a rising China.[24] Offensive realism suggests
that how much states fear each other determines the severity of their security competition
as well as the likelihood that they will fight a war.[25] As signaled above, states cannot
accurately assess their relative cyberpower because offensive cyber capabilities tend to be
highly classified. Fear has therefore driven both states to invest in offensive and
defensive capabilities.[26] There is also an incentive for both to misrepresent their strength, so the true balance of
power is unclear.[27] This may lead to a misperception of dominance, particularly when the effectiveness of
cyberweapons is poorly understood.[28] However, a cyber conflict between the US and China is highly unlikely.
Examples of attacks with destructive or physical consequences are still very rare (although the number may be increasing).
Since the late 1980s, there have been 61 attacks conducted by states against during peacetime, and 24 during wartime.[29]
Examples include Russian attacks on Georgia in 2008 and the infamous Stuxnet attack on Iranian nuclear infrastructure
(usually attributed to the US and Israel).[30] No state has ever declared a cyberwar.[31] This is partly because to develop
sophisticated attacks like Stuxnet is very difficult, requiring high levels of technical expertise. [32]
Attribution is
also notoriously difficult in cyberspace. It is extremely tough to trace attacks and states
may also use proxy or non-state actors, further confusing the issue .[33] Until recently, the
failure to develop an effective deterrence policy has been related to the difficulty in
attributing cyberattacks. Nevertheless, the US has reserve[d] the right to use all necessary means diplomatic,
informational, military, and economic as appropriate and consistent with applicable international law to respond to
hostile acts in cyberspace.[34] China has not used force against the US in cyberspace but it is clear that cyberattacks
would feature in any broader military clash. Difficulties arise in considering what constitutes a proportionate response to
low-level attacks like hacking or cybercrime. It is very unlikely that any incident of that nature could justify a traditional
military response.[35] To date, countermeasures have fallen well below the use of military force. The US has instead relied
on diplomatic and law enforcement tools: attribution, indictments, and the threat of sanctions.[36] Cyber-enabled
espionage a constant, low level conflict? Intense security competition between the US and China is much more evident
when considering the issue of cyber-enabled espionage. As a trading state, China has benefited from Internet connectivity,
but it is still a net importer of advanced technology.[37] To maintain high growth levels in an innovation-driven world,
economic espionage is a useful shortcut, and economic power is fungible.[38] The US has consistently alleged that China
is conducting economic espionage on a massive scale to support Chinese firms. Good
evidence exists to
support this allegation. For instance, one study found that 96 percent of recorded, state-affiliated
attacks targeting businesses trade secrets and other intellectual property in 2012 could
be traced by to Chinese hackers.[39] While each loss might be small, the net effect has been described as the
most significant transfer of wealth in history.[40] In response, China has consistently accused the US of hypocrisy,
supported by evidence in the Snowden disclosures of the extent to which the US had penetrated a range of Chinese
companies and networks.[41] Chinese officials point out that China is the largest victim of cyber attacks in the world,
many emanating from the US.[42] In Chinas view, the US has no moral standing to make accusations against China or
define norms of appropriate behaviour online.[43] Despite this, the US has attempted to draw a distinction between
espionage for national security purposes and economic espionage for the benefit of a states firms (such as Chinas state-
owned enterprises). While China has historically refused to acknowledge this distinction, US policy has been calibrated
both to develop this norm and to raise the costs of Chinese activity. Until recently, actions in cyberspace had been largely
penalty-free. Over the last two years, the US has executed the first steps in a new strategy to change the cost-benefit-risk
calculus for its cyber adversaries.[44] In May 2014, the Department of Justice indicted of five members of the Chinese
Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) for hacking and commercial espionage against major US companies.[45] Following the
high-profile hack of Sony pictures in December 2014, the US attributed the attack to North Korean actors the first time
that the US had publicly attributed an attack on a US company to a foreign government.[46] Then, in April 2015,
President Obama signed an executive order allowing the US to impose severe financial restrictions on individuals or
entities who engage in or benefit from cyber-enabled economic espionage.[47] In advance of President Xi Jinpings first
state visit to the US in 2015, there were serious indications that the Obama administration might impose sanctions against
China in a second major volley on economic espionage.[48] Shortly before the visit, Obama described theft of intellectual
property and trade secrets as an act of aggression and a core national security threat.[49] Despite previously refusing
to accept the US distinction between acceptable espionage for national security and unacceptable economic espionage,
President Xi reached a landmark agreement with President Obama in September 2015. The two leaders agreed that
neither countrys government will conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, including
trade secrets or other confidential business information, with the intent of providing competitive advantages to companies
or commercial sectors.[50][51] The agreement was an unexpected reversal of the Chinese position. Offensive realism
suggests that China may have signed the agreement for two reasons. Threatened with sanctions, China made a rational
choice the costs of cyber activity against the US were rising and it was in Chinas interest to agree. More pessimistically,
China may also have signed with no intention of adhering to the agreement. Offensive realism suggests that concerns
about cheating will hinder cooperation, as states fear that the other side will cheat, putting them at a disadvantage. [52]
Subsequent evidence suggests that China is not complying with the agreement. The Director of National Intelligence noted
in February 2016 that China continues to have success in cyber espionage against the U.S. government, our allies, and
U.S. companies.[53] Continuing Chinese activity suggests that the US has not succeeded in raising the real costs of
economic espionage. The costs of an indictment and the threat of sanctions are slight in comparison to the benefits China
is reaping from its economic espionage practices.[54] Cheating on a cyber agreement may also be simpler because
deception is a core part of network intrusions.[55] As long as the benefits to China outweigh the risks, there is no reason to
stop. For the US, it appears that more significant punishments may be too costly or escalatory to pursue.[56] Some of this
reluctance likely derives from concerns about damaging relations with a state with a major economic market.[57] Internet
governance and China as a revisionist power As discussed earlier, part of what facilitates US hegemony in cyberspace is
the economic gains it realises and its influence on global Internet governance issues. To date, the US has set the terms for
Internet governance[58] and key organisations often are seen as captive to US interests.[59] The global Internet
governance system is also closely aligned with the US vision of an open, interoperable, secure, and reliable Internet that
supports global commerce, strengthens international security and fosters free expression and innovation.[60] Internet
governance is currently based on a multi-stakeholder model with states, civil society, technical experts and private
companies all working together. Internet governance currently tends to reinforce the US economic competitiveness, and
works indirectly to realize a US vision of a liberal, integrated world founded on an open internet.[61] The Internet is a
platform for expanding free market commerce and free speech, and for information and economic exchanges.[62] In
contrast, Chinese cyber foreign policy is premised on an interpretation of the United Nations
(UN) system as protecting absolute sovereignty, which stops other states from interfering
in its domestic political affairs.[63] This approach, along with a perception of excessive US influence, has
shaped Chinas proposals for Internet governance reforms . Based on a principle of Internet
sovereignty, China is promoting an agreement that states refrain from interference of
any kind with another states cyberspace, and a proposal that the Internet be run by a
multilateral international forum. Chinas proposed Internet governance reforms would bolster the role of
governments in Internet governance. The US and others fear that increasing governmental authority in cyberspace would
legitimate authoritarian control, and could result in the balkanisation of cyberspace along territorial lines.[64] The
Internet governance debate reflects two different visions for global political order. Offensive realism characterises the
international order at any time as largely resulting from the self-interested actions of the great powers.[65] Currently, that
order reflects US interests, while Chinas recent diplomatic efforts comprise an effort to revise the system. China is
perhaps best seen as the most assertive and the most potent of a new of new powers that challenge the existing
international order and the American role in it.[66] The limitations of offensive realism While offensive realism
can help characterize the security competition between the US and China, it does not adequately account for a
range of related cybersecurity issues. One of the key challenges in considering
cybersecurity is that the concept encompasses a wide range of overlapping
issues not only security, but also economic, political, social and cultural
issues. As a result, more than one international relations theory is required
to help explain the entire US-China cybersecurity relationship. As a counterpoint to
the offensive realist analysis above, I shall briefly highlight how liberal theories can contribute. Liberalism is very
broad school of thought, but its contributions are likely to provide another valuable tool for
understanding relations in cyberspace, especially given its insistence that the economy
matters as much as security. China and the US are highly economically interdependent, so the trade elements of
the relationship should not be neglected. For example, there have been signs of declining interest in bilateral trade and
investment in the technology sector because of Chinas new cybersecurity laws requiring companies to comply with
contentious policies such as installing backdoors in software.[67] Other key contributions include acknowledging the
importance of domestic political factors in determining states international behaviour and the role of institutions in
establishing rules for state behaviour.[68] I will briefly address each of these in the context of US-China relations. The
domestic landscape is ignored by neorealism but it is critical to understanding Chinas Internet governance policies.
Increased Internet uptake in China (now around 618 million Internet users) provides a platform for dissenting voices and
challenges to the Chinese Communist Party regimes legitimacy.[69] For China, control of the Internet and flows of
information through its extensive censorship regime is not a human rights violation, but a necessary tool for political
stability.[70] Risk of political interference and subversion means that China takes a highly regulated approach to its
domestic Internet (including the Great Firewall).[71] So while
the US defines cybersecurity in terms of
technical threats, China includes ideological threats and the control of information
content.[72] Chinas push to strengthen the role of states in controlling cyberspace cannot
be understood without considering its domestic concerns.[73] Finally, offensive realism is very
sceptical of the impact of norms and institutions on the international system these are seen as vehicles for the interests
of the powerful. Cooperation also is limited because states do not seek mutual security.[74] However,
there are clear
examples of cooperative activity, including through institutions, evident in the US-China
relationship. Both the US and China have a formal position that security in cyberspace
can only be achieved through international cooperation.[75] For instance, both states have
been engaged in creating regional cyber confidence-building measures in the ASEAN
Regional Forum (ARF).[76] There has also been a concerted effort by both the US and China
to help develop norms of online behaviour, in particular through a UN Group of Governmental Experts
(GGE) process kicked off in 2010. Defensive realism can offer a more nuanced picture of
cooperation (if states are happy to live with the status quo), but liberalism, in particular neoliberal
institutionalism, is likely to have greater explanatory power in this context. Conclusion The
overriding feature of cyberspace is its complexity. Cybersecurity policy incorporates a web of linked
security, economic and social issues. A focus on cyberspace therefore highlights both the deep economic interdependence
between China and the US, as well as the rivalry and lack of trust on security issues.[77] Offensive realism provides a
useful framework for considering the national security rivalry in cyberspace and illuminates the current security
competition. However, neorealism fails to capture the full range of issues that affect
cybersecurity relations. Other approaches will be required. Aspects of liberal theories can help explain
factors such the impact of domestic policies. The nature of engagement in cyberspace (and
the construction of cyberspace itself) is also amenable to constructivist analysis.
1AC Solvency
Contention Three is Solvency
Establishing mutual forbearance prevents accidental conflict in
cyberspace.
Given that the United States and China would like to reduce mutual suspicion in
cyberspace, one option might be the negotiation of agreement on a set of norms . Since
both sides express concern over the possibility of the other side targeting its critical
infrastructure, the core of the deal would be for the United States and China to
abjure cyberattacks on each others critical infrastructure.30 This proposal was
well received by the respondents, with interviewees from across academic, think tank,
military, and state organizations all responding positively to this proposal .31 Respondents
appeared to hold relatively similar views of the definition of critical infrastructure to
those of their U.S. counterpartssuch things as the electrical power grid and the banking system. One
respondent noted that there is precedent for such a deal; in early May 2015, just days before we conducted our field
interviews, Russia and China announced a general agreement to cooperate with and not attack each other in
cyberspace.32 The first component of any mutual forbearance proposal is that progress has been made on not attacking
critical infrastructure since our interviews in Beijing. In July 2015, the Chinese signed a UN report that called for such
attacks to be abjured.33 There are also indications that the United States and China mutually agree not to attack each
there is little
others critical infrastructureor at least not be the first to do so.34 As of this writing, however,
indication that these agreements have evolved from the trust-us-not-to stage to
something that is verifiable. This is why two more components to such an agreement are crucial to fulfill the
purposes of the first component. As a second, and logically entailed, component of any mutual forbearance proposal, the
United States and China could also agree not to carry out cyber espionage on
each others critical infrastructure. The rationale for this step is that cyber
espionage is almost always a prerequisite for a cyberattack and that it is
impossible to distinguish intrusions for the purposes of cyber espionage from
an imminent attack if detected by the target. If the two sides have no intent to attack
each others critical infrastructure, they have no need to compromise each others critical
infrastructure systems either, particularly if carried out by inserting malicious code into the target
infrastructure. Indeed, both cyber espionage and cyberattack typically entail the prior implantation
of computer code in target systems, which then periodically calls back (beacons) to the attacker for further
instruction. Implants make subsequent penetrations much easier because the attackers are
already inside the targets systems. Banning cyber espionage against critical
infrastructure would make it much more difficult to quickly carry out cyberattacks on
such infrastructure. Without preplanning and cyber espionage, it could take weeks,
months, or even years to carry out such attacks, but if potential adversaries are already
inside each others critical infrastructure, attacks can be carried out almost
instantaneously. Such a ban, if enacted by the two sides, would have several advantages.
First, if successfully executed, a ban would enhance stability, since it would remove
critically important systems from being targeted. Second, a ban would raise the costs of
targeting such systems (since, if China were discovered doing so, it would violate the
countrys given word, potentially affecting its ability to credibly negotiate on other issues
in the future), while simultaneously addressing the problem of time that cyberattacks
prepared in advance can pose. Third, such an agreement, if fully realized, would reduce
the prospect of accidental conflict by committing the two sides not just to not
attacking each others critical infrastructure but to staying away from it completely,
thereby eliminating the possibility of misunderstanding a cyber espionage effort
as an imminent attack.
Strengthening Chinese attribution capabilities is key prevents

miscalculation and results in Chinese concession of past attacks
no tech transfer.
Might these obstacles be lowered if the United States offered to share its insights into
attribution techniques with China in return for Chinas willingness to credit such
techniques as evidence of verification and then move to prosecute those who carried out
such intrusions? At first glance, such a proposal appears implausible: Under most circumstances,
countries do not share strategic technology or operating concepts with potential
adversaries. Yet, there have been exceptions to this general pattern . For example, the United
States, in pursuit of nuclear stability, encouraged other countries to adopt permissive
action links for their nuclear weapons (a technology that prevents such weapons from being used
accidentally or at the instigation of unauthorized users). An added benefit is that stronger
Chinese attribution capabilities could reduce the chances of a catalytic
conflict if China is attacked by someone masquerading as a U.S. source. As a
practical matter, the United States need not share what normally would be classified intelligence
sources and methods; it can leverage recent improvements in private attribution
capabilities (most, but not all, of which are associated with U.S.-based companies) to give
China more confidence in its own attribution capabilities. It is worth clarifying that an
offer to help bring Chinese attribution capabilities closer to those available in the United
States does not mean that the United States would be teaching China how to detect cyber
espionage intrusions, how to improve its defenses, or how to keep its own
penetrations from being detected by the United States, to say nothing of it having no
relationship to improving the efficiency of PRC cyberintrusion or attack capabilities. Granted, an offer to help
bring Chinas attribution capabilities up to the level of the United States would probably help China
mask its attacks. Inasmuch as the United States has yet to use such attribution to curb
Chinese cyber espionage (and cyberattacks), it is unclear exactly how great a loss that would
be.41 Even if it becomes harder to attribute attacks to China, it would only
make a modest difference because China does not admit complicity in the
face of considerable evidence today as is. Our Chinese respondents reacted
favorably to this proposition, even when coupled with the implication that the
United States would therefore expect China to give more credence to
evidence that a particular intrusion set originated in China. Given the sensitivities
associated with how attribution is done in the United States, a deal to get China to sign up to an attribution regime in
possible return for the United States showing China how it does attribution would likely require substantial additional
research and caveating prior to any possible adoption as policy. For
China, an agreement to foreswear
attacking critical infrastructure would need to be introduced clearly and officially,
probably incrementally, and with clear consequences for cheating. Still, this proposal
carries some prospect of raising the costs of cyber espionage to the point
that lower-grade, nonstrategic (i.e., economic) actions are reduced or eliminated.
It also reduces the risk of misattribution due to malicious third-party actors
seeking to route their attacks on one or another side through U.S. or Chinese servers.
And it appears to be one area where it might be possible to gain meaningful buy-in and
payoffs from the two sides. For such reasons, it may be worth further exploration. Although using a neutral
third-party attribution capability to enforce the nocyber espionage aspects of such an agreement is, in our opinion,
preferable to improving Chinese attribution capabilities, the latter may
be an acceptable price to
pay to persuade China that it cannot afford to be caught spying on the U.S.
critical infrastructure whereas today China can blithely ignore all the
evidence showing it spies where it should not.
The aff is key for an effective Trump administration cyber

strategy expands the September agreement beyond IP theft.
Segal & Knake 1/29 (Adam; Segal is the Ira A. Lipman chair in emerging technologies and national
security and director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations; Knake is the
Whitney Shepardson senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as director for cybersecurity policy at
the U.S. National Security Council from 2011 to 2015; 1/29/17; How the Next U.S. President Can Contain China in
Cyberspace; https://jia.sipa.columbia.edu/how-next-us-president-can-contain-china-cyberspace; Journal of
International Affairs)
The next president should keep the pressure on China, but that requires
following the Obama administration playbook. When transition planning gets underway in
earnest this fall, one of the hardest memos to write will be the outbrief from the current National Security Council (NSC)
team on what to do about Chinas ongoing campaign of cyber espionage targeting the intellectual property of U.S.
companies. While long a focus of both the presidents cyber and China teams, there is little chance that in the coming
months the issue is going to be brought to any type of resolution. Instead, the next president will inherit a partially
implemented plan that has produced positive results in the short term, but its long-term sustainability remains uncertain.
He or she would be wise to follow the playbook left by the Obama administration, with a redoubled focus on the
investigation and prosecution of cybercrime. Critics
of the administration on this topic generally fall
into two camps. One, summed up nicely by the title of a book by Peter Kiernan, is the Becoming Chinas Bitch camp.
[1] In this view, the United States is so dependent on China that the Chinese can do what they
want and there is little Americans can do to stop them. They hold U.S. debt, Americans cant
manufacture anything without them, Chinese students are leaps and bounds smarter than American students, and there
are millions more of them studying science and math. The Chinese are strategic, looking around the corner of history and
shaping it in their interests. They are playing three-dimensional chess and President Obama has been playing checkers.
They put the blame on what they would characterize as Obamas willingness to lead from behind. They then quote Sun
Tzu, reference Unrestricted Warfare, and drop the mic.[2] The
second view is the Coming Collapse of
China camp.[3] In this view, despite an aggressive anti-corruption campaign and a more
assertive foreign policy, China is weak, wounded, and dangerous. The Communist Party made a
deal with the devil, offering economic growth in exchange for loyalty to the regime. Now, the leadership cant keep up with
their end of the bargain. Growth is slowing, and at a faster pace than the official figures acknowledge. Over investment
continues and economic reforms have stalled. Air and water pollution are a drag on the economy and a threat to citizen
health. Paranoid about any dissent, the party has tightened restrictions on the Internet and the media and arrested
feminists, civil rights activists, and lawyers. One spark could start protests that lead to widespread instability and perhaps
the end of Communist Party rule. Whats interesting is that these divergent views of Chinas place in the
world similarly predict there is little chance that China will cease stealing intellectual
property. In the first view, China holds all the cards, and there is simply nothing the United States can do to impose
costs and stop the hacking of companies. If China is desperate and dangerous, then it cant stop stealing technology and
business secrets because they are needed to fuel the economy. What
the Obama Administration has
Accomplished The Obama administration, in its handling of China in general and on cybersecurity in particular,
has taken a third view. China and the United States have mutual interests in global
economic prosperity and geopolitical stability. China needs to trade with the United
States. China has an interest in a deal on climate change, which threatens its security
much more than it does the United States. China needs to contain North Korea, a menace it is separated
from by a river not an ocean. China also has interest in great-power status. The Obama
administrations strategy has been to use these interests to nudge China to
change its behavior in cyberspace without destabilizing the overall
relationship. Historically, Beijing has maintained that it does not engage in any
form of cyber espionage or cyber attacks, that China is the worlds biggest victim of
cyber crime, that as a developing country China does not have the resources to police
cyberspace, and that attribution is all but impossible in cyberspace so tracing any malicious activity back to China is
unwarranted and driven by the desire to either distract from Americas own activity in cyberspace or demonize China.
The Obama administration steadily dismantled this line of argument . In the
winter of 2013, the incident response firm Mandiant, now part of FireEye, put out a report tracing cyber espionage on
American companies to Unit 61938 of the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA), located in a building on the outskirts of
Shanghai.[4] At around the same time, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) provided Internet service providers
with the IP addresses of hacking groups in China. In March 2013, at a speech at the Asia Society, the U.S. national security
advisor, Tom Donilon, spoke of the serious concerns about sophisticated, targeted theft of confidential business
information and proprietary technologies through cyber intrusions emanating from China on an unprecedented scale.[5]
When the two presidents met in California in June 2013, President Obama
warned President Xi that the
hacking could severely damage the bilateral relationship. In May 2014, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) indicted five PLA hackers. The FBI put together a classic wanted poster, showing photos of the
hackers, their names, ranks, and hacker handles which included UglyGorilla and KandyGoo.[6] The indictment provided
details of their specific activities. Beijing denounced the indictments as lies, but the administration had brought new
details to attribution and the practice of naming and shaming.[7] The Obama administration ratcheted up pressure again
in 2015. In April, the president signed an executive order that would allow for economic sanctions against companies or
individuals that profited from the ill-gotten gains of cyber theft.[8] The order threatened to block financial transactions
routed through the United States, block access to the U.S. market, and prevent company executives from traveling through
the United States. That August, the Washington Post reported that the administration planned to levy these sanctions
against Chinese companies in the lead up to the September 2015 presidential summit.[9] The leak sent Chinese envoy
Meng Jianzhu, a member of the political bureau of the Communist Partys Central Committee, running to Washington to
make a deal. That deal, reached after all-night negotiations at the Wardman Park Hotel, included a commitment by both
sides to not conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, including trade secrets or other
confidential business information for commercial advantage.[10] Washington and Beijing also agreed to identify and
endorse norms of behavior in cyberspace and establish two high-level working groups and a hotline between the two sides.
Critics of the deal were skeptical that China would stop doing something it had insisted it had never done in the first place.
They also worried about how Beijing would interpret knowingly support and commercial advantage. Despite these
potential loopholes, the agreement contained important secondary commitments for
verification and enforcement. For the first time, China agreed to investigate and prosecute
cyber crimes at the request of the U.S. government and to set up a series of
communication and reporting mechanisms to demonstrate compliance. As President Obama
put it during the Rose Garden ceremony announcing the agreement, he did not expect President Xi to be able to stop all
cyber crimes in China, but he did expect Chinas help in investigating them. What Ive said to President Xi and what I say
to the American people is the question now is, are words followed by actions. And we
will be watching carefully
to make an assessment as to whether progress has been made in this area. [11] Has China
Changed its Behavior? In the months since the deal, assessing that progress has not been easy. After departing the United
States, Xi signed similar agreements with the United Kingdom and at the G20 meeting in Turkey. An agreement with
Germany is expected this year. If Xi did not intend to honor these agreements, he was foolishly building international
support for actions the United States or others might take against China at some future date. There were also some reports
in the United States about Chinese authorities arresting Chinese hackers, though Chinese sources never clarified whether
these hackers were after targets in the United States or China. Shortly after the agreement was announced, the
cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike put out a report claiming that it had detected and stopped attacks against six of its
customers and traced them back to China.[12] CrowdStrike could not say for certain that the attackers were intent on
stealing intellectual property or transferring it to commercial companies for economic gain, but the targets, mostly
pharmaceutical companies, suggested no other reasonable explanation. In addition, in April 2016, National Security
Agency cyber head Admiral Michael Rogers told the Senate Armed Services Committee, we continue to see them engage
in activity directed against U.S. companies. The question I think we still need to ask is, is that activity then in turn then
shared with the Chinese private industry?[13] A spate of ransomware attacksmalicious software that encrypts and holds
a victims data hostagetraced back to groups that previously engaged primarily in intellectual property theft suggests
that business hawking stolen secrets may be drying up. This shift suggests that the attackers can no longer make a living
on stolen intellectual property and are searching for new sources of revenue. It also appears the PLA is stepping down its
activity, while actors tied to the Ministry of State Security continue to break into U.S. networks. A year later, evidence
suggests that China
is upholding the agreement. FireEyes iSight Intelligence group reported a
sharp decline in the number of Chinese cyber attacks.[14] While FireEye did not conclude
that Chinese cyber actors had altogether ceased their activity, it did conclude that the Chinese government had
recalculated its use of cyber espionage, likely in order to avoid continued harm to the bilateral relationship with the
United States. U.S. Assistant Attorney General John Carlin confirmed the companys findings that attacks were less
voluminous but more focused and calculated.[15] CrowdStrike concurred with its rivals findings, though CrowdStrikes
chief technology officer, Dmitri Alperovich, attributed the slowdown in activity to a reorganization within the Chinese
government. He told the Wall Street Journal that he would not necessarily assume that this is a long-term trend.[16]
Alperovichs conclusion does not fit with the evidence as presented by FireEye. The security researcher David Tait overlaid
FireEyes graph of Chinese cyber activity with just four of the policy actions taken by the Obama administration (see
below).[17] The graphic reveals immediate, though small drop-offs in Chinese activity
following each new action, cascading into a large overall decline. The correlation strongly suggests
that China is in fact responsive to U.S. pressure. Moreover, the Obama administration likely had its own
evidence of Chinas change in behavior and made decisions to threaten but not drop
sanctions on that basis. At the very least, the days of smash and grab, hitting many companies, extracting data,
and leaving without caring about getting caught, may be gone. Chinese actors are more selective and more stealthy at a
What the
minimum. In the world of cybersecurity, getting the Chinese to care about getting caught is a victory.
Next President Should Do The next administration will face the challenge of making
sure there is no backsliding from Beijing and the even more difficult job of turning China
into a serious partner in the investigation and prosecution of cybercrime. To do that, the
next president will need to continue to maintain pressure on China. First and foremost, the
issue must remain at the top of the bilateral agenda. The next president must make it clear
to China that good relations and progress on issues that matter to Beijing will
require a reduction in hacking. Second, the next administration should make keeping score of
the agreement a routine and public process. Whether through Interpol or another organization, the
administration should work to establish an independent third party for the processing of legal assistance requests and
press the organization to publicly release reports on response rates. As it stands now, only the U.S. government is in a
position to judge whether China is holding up its end of the agreement. A third-party accreditor of this process could keep
the books and make the release of information on it routine rather than political.
The single-issue plan pragmatically sustains the 2015 agreement

to create a norm that spills over.
Although the summit statement on cyber-enabled intellectual property theft was an important first step,
cyberespionage will continue to be an irritant in the U.S.-China relationship. Neither side agreed to reduce spying for
political and military purposes; cyberespionage is too important to the national interests of both. The ideological battle
over an open and free Internet will not end. Sovereignty in cyberspace will also continue to divide the two sides, as will the
application of the law of armed conflict in cyberspace and the role of governments in the multi-stakeholder model of
Internet governance. Beijing
and Washington want to prevent escalatory cyber operations
attacks that one side sees as legitimate surveillance but the other views as prepping the
battlefield. Much like discussions about incidents at sea or in the air are meant to regularize
interactions and prevent miscalculations, the senior experts group should work to clarify
intentions in cyberspace. Formal discussions on acceptable norms of behavior and
possible thresholds for use of force, as well as greater transparency on
doctrine, can reduce the chance of misperception and thus diminish the likelihood that
a conflict in cyberspace will become kinetic. Attribution remains a point of
contention, with Beijing calling the United States claim that China was behind the attacks on the Office of
Personnel Management irresponsible and unscientific.68 A shared understanding of what types of
evidence can be used to attribute an attack and how that information is presented would
be an important first step to defining norms of behavior. The 2015 UN Group of
Governmental Experts report also calls on states to substantiate public accusations of state-sponsored cyberactivity and
notes that the indication that an ICT activity was launched or otherwise originates from a States territorymay be
insufficient in itself to attribute the activity to that state.69 If this norm is truly accepted, it will mean that the United
States, and other countries, will have to provide more public evidence of who is behind an attack. At the June 2015
Strategic and Economic Dialogue, State Councilor Yang Jiechi called for China to work with the
United States to develop an international code of conduct for cyber information
sharing.70 While the Chinese side did not offer any specifics, Washington and Beijing could establish a joint forensics
team, made up of experts from the government, private sector, and academia, to investigate an attack on a third party and
identify types of information to be shared. Trust
is currently a rare commodity in the Sino-
U.S. bilateral relationship, and it is especially difficult to sustain in
cyberspace. Much of what happens in this domain occurs in the shadows, out of the public sight. States do not take
credit for cyberattacks, and there has been a widespread reluctance to talk publicly of the development of cyberweapons
and offensive doctrines. In many cases, states outsource cyber operations to patriotic hackers, criminals, and other
proxies. The2015 agreement on cybersecurity was a significant symbolic step forward for
China and the United States, but trust will be built and sustained through
implementation. Both countries will test whether the high-level dialogue mechanism
will successfully assist in cooperation and better incident response . While it is good that
Washington and Beijing have agreed to further the discussion on the norms of
cyberspace, the dialogue must be formalized, routinized, and insulated from
political point scoring. Without practical progress, cybersecurity could quickly rise to
the top of the bilateral agenda and threaten to undermine the U.S.-China relationship
again.
China believes US attribution tech works official statements

prove.
Sulmeyer & Chang 1/22 (Michael & Amy; Sulmeyer is the Belfer Center's Cyber Security Project
director at the Harvard Kennedy School. He recently concluded several years in the Office of the Secretary of Defense,
serving most recently as the Director for Plans and Operations for Cyber Policy. He was also Senior Policy Advisor to the
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy; Chang is an affiliate with the Belfer Centers Cyber Security Project
at the Harvard Kennedy School. Her research examines cybersecurity and technology policy issues, U.S.-China relations,
and U.S.-Asia foreign policy. Ms. Chang recently served as the Staff Director of the Asia and the Pacific Subcommittee at
the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs; 1/22/17; Three Observations on China's Approach to
State Action in Cyberspace; https://www.lawfareblog.com/three-observations-chinas-approach-state-action-cyberspace;
Lawfare)
We just returned from 36 hours in Beijing as part of a small group of American

academics and government representatives to meet with Chinese counterparts
about contemporary issues in cybersecurity. This is the 10th round of this
dialogue, led by U.S. think-tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and Chinese think-tank China
Institute for Contemporary International Relations (CICIR). (These so-called Track 1.5 dialogues blend official Track 1
discussions between senior government leaders with Track 2 meetings of academics and other non-government
individuals.) We were
fortunate to have on the other side of the table a mix of representatives
from various Chinese ministries and agencies (including the Cyberspace Administration of
China, its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, its Ministry of Defense, China's national Computer Emergency Response Team, and
its security services via think tank links), as well as a handful of independent researchers. In exchange for candor,
participants forfeit the ability to publicize details of these discussions. We will honor that arrangement. But we also
think it worthwhile to share three observations from our recent interactions that shed light on
Chinese thinking about recent cybersecurity-related events. First: The Chinese believe that attribution is
nearly impossible. We were continually surprised by how pervasive this talking point
about attribution being so difficult in cyberspace continues to be. From our respective
experiences in government (Michael in the Department of Defense, Amy on Capitol Hill) as well as our
experiences conducting cybersecurity research, perhaps we are biased with a greater
awareness that it is indeed possible to determine who does what. The general thinking is that
while public attribution of cyber intrusions has historically been quite challenging, today there are several
reasons why it is possible for states (and private companies) to attribute hacks. The real
question is not if states can attribute cyber attacks, but if they will publicly do so. Throughout the
discussion we found our Chinese colleagues to be not just convinced that
attribution is too difficult and uncertain, but that only the United States can do it.
China, in their view, lacks the sophisticated techniques and technology to
attribute cyber attacks, and has appealed to the United States to share its
own attribution technologies (as if the ability to attribute rested solely in some sort of magic device) so
that the international community could have greater transparency behind malicious cyber activity.
Competition only exists in cyberspace due to a lack of strategic

trust attribution resolves the root cause.
Contrary to the negative language mostly used by Chinese scholars, senior

officials usually take a more
rational and calm position. For example, in keynote remarks at the eighth U.S.-China Internet Industry Forum,
Lu Wei, the head of the Cyberspace Administration of China, compared the countries to two people in the same boat who
can combat a storm only by paddling together. As President Xi has highlighted, steady and
constructive cooperation in cyberspace will be beneficial to the whole bilateral
relationship. Obviously, there is a structural difference of cyber awareness between China and the United States. The
two countries are at different stages of technological development. All China does today is what the United States has
already accomplished. China tends to learn and absorb U.S. best practices and lessons and has followed the U.S. model,
which one might perhaps call a late-starting advantage. The
United States, for its part, keeps a close eye
on the measures China takes to improve its defense capabilities in the cyber domain and
views these as a challenge. The root cause is absence of strategic trust between
both sides. Undoubtedly, a cybersecurity agreement that includes a practical cooperative
mechanism would be a crucial step in building trust in the two countries future
relationship in the cyber domain Areas of Convergence and Recommendations for Cooperative Initiatives
Despite the wide ideological gulf between the two sides, both China and the United
States have identified cyberspace as an area that requires cooperation . As President Xi said in
Washington in September 2015, all in all, we have broad, common interest in the field of the
cyber. But we need to strengthen cooperation and avoid leading to confrontation .63
China and the United States have a shared interest in controlling cybercrime, reducing the
likelihood of cyber conflict, limiting the proliferation of cyber capabilities, developing rules of supply-chain security, and
building cybersecurity exchanges and expertise. The
2015 summit agreement begins to lay a
foundation for cooperation on cybercrime, stating that the two sides will establish a
high-level joint dialogue mechanism in order to review the timeliness and quality of
requests for information and assistance in criminal investigations. On the U.S. side, the mechanism is led by the
Departments of Homeland Security and Justice. Chinese participation includes the Cyberspace Administration of China;
For the
the Ministries of Public Security, State Security, and Justice; and the State Internet Information Office.
goodwill created at the summit to endure, concrete cooperation in the investigation
and exchange of evidence will be required. There was positive follow up in the first
round of talks between the Department of Homeland Security and the Ministry of Public
Security in December 2015. The two sides agreed on guidelines for requesting assistance on cybercrimes or
other malicious cyberactivities, as well as agreeing to conduct tabletop exercises in spring 2016 and to define procedures
for use of a hotline. Washington said it would consider Chinas proposal for a seminar on combatting terrorist misuse of
ICT, while Beijing agreed to study the United States proposal on inviting experts to conduct network protection
exchanges.64 Future discussions involving participants from both countries law-enforcement agencies and computer
emergency response teams should identify the types of information that are necessary to attribute the nature and source of
a cyberattack.
Theoretical critiques that lack practical policy proposals cant

solve U.S.-China war.
Goldstein 15 (Lyle J; Associate Professor and Founding Director of the China Maritime Studies Institute at the
U.S. Naval War College, Visiting Fellow of the Watson Institute of International Studies at Brown University, formerly
served in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University; 2015; Introduction:
Reversing the Escalation Spiral; Meeting China Halfway: How to Defuse the Emerging US-China Rivalry; Georgetown
University Press, p. 21)
In order to shift the daunting intellectual tide against rivalry and toward cooperation in
pursuit of peaceful systemic change, scholars must climb down from the ivory
tower and enter the realm of subjective argumentation and normative
judgment. And they cannot do this armed only with elegant models and esoteric
analyses. Rather, it is imperative for them to develop an academically defensible set of
proposalshere presented in the form of cooperation spirals. In the pages that follow, ten
separate cooperation spirals are elaborated, each with a graphic figure and text explaining the recommendations. The
author readily admits that certain proposals require greater specificity, although this has been provided to the extent
possible here, given space limitations. Also, the author in no way believes that just one set of steps should constitute these
cooperation spirals, or that they should be limited to just a hundred steps in ten issue areas. Issue area experts are
certainly welcome to propose superior cooperation spirals, with greater specificity, realism, and thus promise to improve
the relationship. The book is thus intended to spark a debate and perhaps further research about
how such spirals should be correctly structuredabove all, to incorporate the principles of gradualism,
reciprocity, fairness, and enforceability. The aim is to move bilateral diplomacy in this most crucial
relationship beyond the red-faced wagging of fingers and the bland and seemingly
useless recitation of well-worn talking points. A creative dialogue among scholars and
strategists on both sides of the Pacific may seek to perfect these cooperation spirals with
the ambitious goal of moving the relationship to a better place enabling a modus
vivendi built on the principles of negotiation and compromise that will undergird
global peace and development in the decades and centuries to come.
Pragmatism is good.
Kratochwil 09 (Friedrich; Chair of International Relations at the European University Institute, holds an
M.A. in International Relations from Georgetown University and a Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University; 2009; Ten
points to ponder about pragmatism: some critical reflections on knowledge generation in the social sciences;
Pragmatism in International Relations, p. 20-21)
First, a
pragmatic approach does not begin with objects or things (ontology), or with reason and
method (epistemology), but with acting (prattein), thereby preventing some false starts. Since, as
historical beings placed in a specific situations, we do not have the luxury of
deferring decisions until we have found the truth we have to act and must do so
always under time pressures and in the face of incomplete information. Precisely
because the social world is characterized by strategic interactions, what a situation is, is hardly ever clear ex ante, since it
is being produced by the actors and their interactions, and the multiple possibilities are rife with incentives for
(dis)information. This puts a premium on quick diagnostic and cognitive shortcuts
informing actors about the relevant features of the situation, and on leaving an alternative open
(plan B) in case of unexpected difficulties. Instead of relying on certainty and universal validity
gained through abstraction and controlled experiments, we know that completeness and
attentiveness to detail, rather than to generality, matter. To that extent, likening practical choices to
simple discoveries of an already independently existing reality disclosing itself to an observeror relying on optimal
strategies is somewhat heroic. These points have been made vividly by realists such as Clausewitz in his controversy
with von Buelow, in which he criticized the latters obsession with a strategic science (Paret et al. 1986). While Clausewitz
has become an [end page 20] icon for realists, a few of them (usually dubbed old realists) have taken seriously his
warnings against the misplaced belief in the reliability and usefulness of a scientific study of strategy. Instead, most of
them, especially neorealists of various stripes, have embraced the theory-building based on the epistemological project
as the via regia to the creation of knowledge. A pragmatist orientation would most certainly not endorse such a position.
Second, since acting in the social world often involves acting for someone, special
responsibilities arise that aggravate both the incompleteness of knowledge as well as its
generality problem. Since we owe special care to those entrusted to us, for example, as teachers, doctors or lawyers,
we cannot just rely on what is generally true, but have to pay special attention to the
particular case. Aside from avoiding the foreclosure of options, we cannot refuse to act on the
basis of incomplete information or insufficient knowledge, and the necessary diagnostic will involve
typification and comparison, reasoning by analogy rather than generalization or deduction. Leaving out the
particularities of a case, be it a legal or medical one, in a mistaken effort to become scientific would be a
fatal flaw. Moreover, there still remains the crucial element of timing of knowing when to act. Students of crises
have always pointed out the importance of this factor but, in attempts at building a general theory of international
politics analogously to the natural sciences, such elements are neglected on the basis of the continuity of nature and the
large number assumptions. Besides, timing seems to be quite recalcitrant to analytical treatment.
Integrating normative considerations and consequences

through a pragmatic framework is key to effective cyber policy.
Belk & Noyes 12 (Robert & Matthew; Belk is a Naval aviator and Politico-Military Fellow, studying
international and global affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. In his 16 years of service, he has made four carrier-based
deployments and one ground-based deployment to Iraq. Following graduation, he is scheduled to report to the Naval
Operations staff in the Pentagon to develop and execute Navy network and cybersecurity policy; Noyes studies
international security policy and is a senior associate with the cybersecurity practice at Good Harbor Consulting. Prior to
attending the Harvard Kennedy School, he served for five years as an infantry officer in the US army serving multiple
tours in Iraq. Following graduation he plans to continue working on cybersecurity issues. He has a degree in Computer
Science and Applied Computational Mathematics from the University of Washington; 3/20/12; On the Use of Offensive
Cyber Capabilities: A Policy Analysis on Offensive US Cyber Policy;
http://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/files/publication/cybersecurity-pae-belk-noyes.pdf; Belfer Center)
III. Framework for Cyber Policy Analysis In order to provide policy recommendations for external
cyber operations, it is important to define the framework through which we derive these
recommendations. Though some have attempted to analyze cyber operations through the lens of
nuclear deterrence33 or even as a direct analogue of operations in other domains,34 we believe that such
systems fail to capture the myriad of relevant considerations that are particular to cyber
operations. To correct this shortcoming, we have developed a framework that elucidates the critical considerations for
employing external cyber capabilities, and therefore the policy for external cyber capability use. In creating this
framework, we recognize that the viability of many of the cyber activities we have defined is often context dependent.
Though it would be convenient to have clearly defined rules of engagement for cyber policy,35 this is an ambitious goal
given the current nature of cyberspace.36For this reason, our
framework is not a checklist that provides a
quantitative output, but rather a conceptual mechanism to gauge external cyber operations. Our framework
includes three aspects, which, in order of significance, are Normative, Operational, and Consequential. (See Figure 5.)
Within these three aspects we have identified a total of 10 critical considerations. These are also listed in order of
significance. This approach provides a holistic and sound model for considering cyber policy implications. Because the
validity of cyber 28 operations is often context dependent, it is not necessarily intended for policy-makers to use this
framework in a linear fashion. In conceptualizing our recommendations, however, it is useful to proceed sequentially
through the aspects and considerations. First, consider the normative permissibility of the action.
What are the key constraints dictating the permissibility of the action? For instance, it is not enough to determine whether
the action is permissible under domestic and international law; we must consider whether the action is ethically
permissible and in accordance with American values. Additionally, do laws need to be adjusted to better align with what is
ethically right and best for society? Next consider the direct operational impacts of the action. Will
the action support National Security Strategy? Can the effects be discriminate, controlled, proportional and timely? In
short, can the action reliably and effectively achieve the desired effects? Finally, consider the
consequences of the external cyber action. What are the second, third, and higher order effects? Such effects
include the domestic reaction, the international state reaction and the effects on American soft power. Figure 5:
Framework for Cyber Policy Analysis 29 Additionally, how might the nature of cyberspace adapt or change in response to
the use of a particular cyber action? Considering
all three sets of cyber policy considerations is
critical to formulating sound cyber policy, and we will discuss each consideration in detail in order to
better understand the challenges for external cyber operations.
Our method is valid and workable we present problems,

analyze them, and then propose contingent solutions thats
best for policymaking because it enables good decisions and
avoids serial policy failure.
Bennett 12 (D. Scott; Professor of Political Science at Penn State, focusing on international conflict,
methodology, and computer applications, author of The Behavioral Origins of War; 2012; Teaching the Scientific Study
of International Politics; Guide to the Scientific Study of International Processes) *SSIP = Scientific Study of
International Processes
Why is generalization or generalizability important? Fundamentally, in order for students to be able to apply any
lessons or arguments they have learned outside the particular case(s) they read, the conclusions
must be generalizable to some broader level. Even interpreting a story in the newspaper in light of prior
events, history, or broad concepts requires that there be some transferability. If every historical event is completely
unique, with no common features or lessons that we can consider, then we are condemned to a chaotic
world in which we see politics and international interac tion as subject to whims and random
behavior. Searching for regularities is a cognitive tools that human beings use; we all
compare events or cases, and seek (consciously or unconsciously) similarities between events to
organize the world we see and guide our behavior. Predicting future events, and
making choices based on expectations of consequences, requires that we believe that
regularities exist. When it comes to inter national politics, luckily, we believe that there are many regularities to
human, group, country, IGO, and NGO behavior. Our task as social scientists is to discern those systematic regularities,
and the limits to the regularities we identify. "Regularity" does not require all behavior to be
perfectly predictable - the world is not completely deterministic, and random
components of behavior may make perfect prediction or explanation impossible. We can
be scientific even in the face of some randomness. For instance, "random" behavior may
be systematic in the sense of fitting into particular stochastic distributions in the
aggregate or over many trials. We can predict probabilistically, suggesting that certain
outcomes under certain conditions are more likely than under other conditions,
even if they are not certain. As with predicting dangerous weather, we do not need a perfect
understanding of the world in order to be scientific and to make useful
assessments. Even if we cannot understand everything, there will be at least some areas where we
can use evidence to demonstrate that particular generalizations, repeated
patterns, and regularities hold. In my discussion of how the scientific study of international politics can
help stu dents, I focus primarily on undergraduates, discussing graduate students more briefly There are certainly
commonalities in the concerns and issues that these two groups bring to the table, but in most colleges and universities
relatively few undergraduates will actually use scientific methods in advanced research. Rather, most under graduates
taking a typical introduction to international relations course will end up in careers in other fields, and rarely be required
to prepare (say) a paper with statistical analysis or game theory in it. Partiy for this reason, when
dealing with
undergraduates it is often useful to frame the discussion of SSIP in the context of policy
assessment. This is because judging current national policies is a critical part of what our
undergradu ates want, need, and will do in the future. It is also something that people do all the time.
Relatively few students (proportionally of a national college audience) will progress to positions in
government, think tanks, or universities where they will actually be doing formal research about politics. Many
students will end up in careers in busi ness, science, the arts, law, or medicine. All of these students will be
potential voters, however, and should be able to pick up a newspaper and interpret
world events, discuss international politics around the proverbial water cooler, and assess
national and international policy and leaders. Given a goal of what some would call "civic educa tion,"
a scientific approach to studying politics can aid in students' understanding of the ideas of logic and evidence that should
accompany assessment of national and inter national policies. Turning out students who blindly support
leaders or policies with out thought or evaluation is not something teachers should aspire
to. Rather, showing students that science and evidence can be used to assess policy immediately shows the relevance of
the concepts to students. For most students, I would argue that the first and most important reason to think about a
scientific approach when learning about international relations is to ensure that students think about the evidence for
assertions and claims that they hear or read, and realize that claims about politics may be evaluated based on evidence.
When a leader argues for a policy, they are implicitly or explicitly asserting that this policy is better than some alternative
policy or policies. But why should we believe that? Some may take pro nouncements on faith, or
ideological allegiance. Others may not even realize that policies may be evaluated. But educated critics and
citizens do not need to simply accept pronouncements or justifications as fact, and we should
always teach students to be critical evaluators of leader behavior and choices. Part of
teaching students to understand politics and make good political decisions
should be to teach them to look for why leaders are suggesting policy actions, and
evaluate whether the recommended actions make sense in light of some (general) theory
of politics and/or behavior that the student or leader believes has been validated, or in light of relevant past evidence.
Students should be taught to ask about forecasts (formal or not) under alternative plans (the status quo being one plan to
consider), and about how a policy fits with past precedent. Merely knowing that policies may be evaluated in this way is a
key first step for some who may assume that policies can only be discussed from a partisan or ideological position. This
does not mean that we as consumers of politics can only assess policies that have a track record (and hence "evidence"),
but rather that we should always seek to assess available evidence, argumentation, assumptions, extrapolations, and
counterfactuals when available rather than take choices and policies as given. Closely related to simply asking what
evidence there is, is teaching students to address the breadth, depth, and quality of that evidence. Generally, a
scientific approach would suggest that the broader the base of evidence for some
theory/relationship/ hypothesis/policy, the more confident we can be that it is correct. A single
anecdote offered in favor of a policy or hypothesis is less strong than a systematically
collected or sampled set of facts, cases, or data points. Generalization, and by
extension forecasting based on generalizations and patterns from the past, requires that specific
pieces of information (cases) have been combined and compared. All other things equal, the
more cases, comparisons, and data there are validating a generalization, the
better. Knowing how broad the evidence is behind an argument or policy, and what
the basis for inference was in the theory and forecasting behind a policy, is also part of
being a critical consumer and evaluator of politics and policy evaluation. Depth of evidence may
also make a difference even if we have a small set of cases, for instance if we contrast a set of connected hypotheses that
are all supported by a single high-quality case traced over time to a single hypotheses supported in a single regression on a
standard data set. Quality of evidence ties to concepts of replication and being explicit about indica tors. If there is "a lot"
of "evidence" but it is all vague or could not be reproduced/ replicated by another researcher, then it is less valuable than
more systematically- collected scientific evidence. One way to phrase this informally is that the scientific approach is like
detective work - it seeks to follow reproducible steps that others (a jury) can follow, and brings to bear multiple methods,
indicators, and arguments to strengthen a claim that is fundamentally based on evidence. Evidence may come in different
forms and from many disparate sources. But the more evidence, and the better its quality, the more convincing the
support for a generalization will be. Evidence is important in the context of evaluating competing arguments or
hypotheses. It is important to understand that there are alternative hypotheses about what makes states or other actors do
what they do, and understanding the evaluation of these hypotheses is critical, as they may lead to different policy choices.
For example, deter rence vs. spiral hypotheses about likely paths to peace and war in the age of nuclear deterrence,
encouraging trade rather than democracy as a remedy to war, or focusing on maintaining balances of power rather than
empowering international institutions to keep the peace, are simple examples of alternative arguments about theories and
variables that have obvious and direct policy implications. Certainly some alternative arguments may be more easily
evaluated with evidence than others. Rather than simply accepting that these competing explanations exist however, or
that your party affiliation must determine which explanation you believe, a scientific
approach will suggest that
on at least some questions, assessment
via evidence is possible. The scientific language of variables
or factors that influence behavior in the real world may also help students assess
complicated political situations that do not fall neatly into one theme, paradigm, or perspective.
Recognizing that leaders may have multiple incentives to increase national power, to increase the odds of their
election/selection, to satisfy domestic constituencies, to decrease the risk of costly war - helps students see the push and
pull of politics. Framed in scientific terms, such influences or incentives may be seen as
variables that influence politics (or which at least are hypothesized to influence politics). Predicting what
leaders or citizens will do, which is critical to assessing the likely effects of
national/international actions and policies, depends in part on what variables we believe are
important, and on the levels of those variables in different situations. Asking students "what variables/
factors are at work here" is a useful way of breaking a complicated situation down
into components. The scientific approach may also draw attention to the logic of arguments and policies. Are
policies, positions, and the arguments behind them logical? Or is some policy or position based on assumptions that are
not logically related, or only true if certain auxiliary assumptions hold true? This would suggest diat we need to reevaluate
the policy, or perhaps leader. Some theories are invalid because they are illogical, others because they are inaccurate.
Some patterns that people actually believe turn out to not exist when real data are examined. Other times, what seems like
a reason able train of thought turns out to have logical problems when closely examined. Both are problems. This
approach to thinking about SSIP would not necessarily require any of the specialized tools often associated with SSIP at
conferences and injournals. Particular tools such as game theory, statistical analysis, explicitly comparative case study
work, and so on may be used to help achieve the purposes of encouraging assessment and consideration of evidence. But
no one specific tool is required to achieve this. Rather, the argument is that the concepts above - however taught - should
be primary. Of course, when we turn to advanced undergraduates who will be carrying out research, and to graduate
students, the requirements for teaching SSIP may become more formal and often become more tool-oriented. Advanced
literature in political science is frequently framed scientifically very clearly, with theory, hypotheses, methods, and
evaluation constituting explicitly separate sections of an article or research program. Students thus need to understand
many of the terms used in scientific research in order to read top journals and the current research on critical topics in
international politics. When it comes to deciding how to do their own research, students also need to understand a range
of methods in order to see the pros and cons of different approaches. If
they do not understand such
concepts as measurement, operationaUzation, cases, regression, data sets, comparative case studies,
degrees of freedom, or coding, it will be difficult for them to fairly assess different
approaches in order to ask what method or methods are appropriate for whatever question they are investigating.
Certainly, not every student will learn every method, but knowing that a range of methodological approaches exists, and
understanding at least the most common, is critical. And of course, in order to do multi-method research well (something
we certainly give lip-service to in our courses), students need to know and be able to use more than one methodology. This
idea has close links to our standard research design courses, which are explicitly designed to explore different approaches
to methodology, offer examples of each, and ask when we might prefer one method over another. In summary, an
SSIP-oriented teaching approach would teach students to carefully assess arguments
about international politics and policies using evidence. Practically, one way to leave our students as
scientists is to encourage them to always ask a series of questions about the arguments and positions they see. As
scientists, they should always be asking questions such as, What is your evidence?
What are your cases? Were they selected fairly, or randomly, or selectively?
What were the outcomes of these cases? How did you conceive of and measure outcomes, and causal factors? How do you
know the outcomes were related to the key causes you are arguing to be operative? What alternative explanations are there
for the same phenomena, and did you control for/ consider them? If we get good answers to these
questions, then we can conclude some thing more favorable about the argument or
position than if we get answers suggesting either a lack of evidence, inappropriate
procedures, or bias in the process of coming to the conclusion. In many ways, international politics is no
different than any other field of social science in its suitability for teaching students to think scientifically. In any field
of inquiry where we seek a positivist answer to a question of why some phenomenon occurs and where
we believe in evidence, questions should be followed by hypotheses which should be
followed by assessment. In any field where there are patterns of behavior and systematic relationships among
variables, we can think about good theory, evidence, and testing - that is, science. This positivist pursuit of knowledge can
incorporate a variety of methods; the various methods we use that are discussed below are simply different ways of doing
empirical work. On the other hand, in certain areas of international politics we might think that particular methodologies
such as game theory have particular resonance. In particular, if leaders clearly think strategically, are backed by large
bureaucracies that are able to gather data and provide information and cost-benefit analyses, and if consequences are
sufficiently important that it is at least reasonable to think about choice-theoretic processes being at work, then even
simple 2 by 2 or extensive form games can illumi nate the value of game theory. For instance, if we were teaching about
the evolution of Cold War nuclear policy, we could clearly use games to think about policy shifts from the era of assured
destruction (one-sided payoffs with no strategy), to MAD (where the consequence of mutual assured destruction means
you are no longer able to profitably defect), to the stability-instability paradox (where complete deterrence and stability at
the strategic level leads to the possibility of conventional attack at the non-nuclear level), to credibility debates (if a side is
not credible, then it is not really guaranteed that you are in a MAD situation) that led to "flexible response doctrine and
limited nuclear options. Cold War nuclear strate^ is a very clear case of leaders and academics explicitly using game
theory for policy making. Here, it
is obvious that game theory was in real use, but we can also
extend the logic to other conflict situations where the stakes are high and there are real
incentives for leaders to analyze a strategic process. More generally, though, international politics
seems neither more nor less suited for scientific study than other areas of political science. In all cases we are dealing with
human beings operating in formal or informal institutional environments. Often our units of analysis (that is, the core
level of observation at which we measure our variables, such as the alliance, dyad, state, or government) are somewhat
more complicated than say individual voters, but this should not make the field less well suited for scientific Study. It does
mean that we may need to be aware of more issues of appropriate research design. For instance, since states often interact
with an eye towards what how other states may react, links between cases and cross-case influence (the non-independence
of cases) may be important. And since we are often comparing national behavior of different countries (a cross-sectional
comparison), but also examining how behavior changes over time (a time-series comparison), we
need to
immediately consider both cross-sectional and time-series issues in data set construction
and analysis. But in terms of the fundamental appropriateness of evidence, hypothesis, and testing, there should be no
difference.
Scenario analysis is pedagogically valuable enhances creativity

and self-reflexivity, deconstructs cognitive biases and flawed
ontological assumptions, and enables the imagination and
creation of alternative futures.
Barma et al. 16 (Naazneen H. Barma, Brent Durbin, Eric Lorber, Rachel E. Whitlark; Barma is Assistant
Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, PhD in Political Science from Berkeley; Durbin is
an assistant professor in the Government Department at Smith College; 11/6/15; Imagine a World in Which: Using
Scenarios in Political Science; https://academic.oup.com/isp/article-abstract/17/2/117/2614149/Imagine-a-World-in-
Which-Using-Scenarios-in?redirectedFrom=fulltext; International Studies Perspectives, Vol 17, Issue 2)
Over the past decade, the cult of irrelevance in political science scholarship has been
lamented by a growing chorus (Putnam 2003; Nye 2009; Walt 2009). Prominent scholars of
international affairs have diagnosed the roots of the gap between academia and policymaking, made the case
for why political science research is valuable for policymaking, and offered a number of ideas for
enhancing the policy relevance of scholarship in international relations and comparative politics (Walt 2005,2011; Mead
2010; Van Evera 2010; Jentleson and Ratner 2011; Gallucci 2012; Avey and Desch 2014). Building on these insights,
several initiatives have been formed in the attempt to bridge the gap.2 Many of the specific efforts put in
place by these projects focus on providing scholars with the skills, platforms, and networks to
better communicate the findings and implications of their research to the policymaking
community, a necessary and worthwhile objective for a field in which theoretical debates, methodological training,
and publishing norms tend more and more toward the abstract and esoteric. Yet enhancing communication
between scholars and policymakers is only one component of bridging the gap between international affairs
theory and practice. Another crucial component of this bridge is the generation of substantive
research programs that are actually policy relevanta challenge to which less concerted
attention has been paid. The dual challenges of bridging the gap are especially acute for graduate students, a particular
irony since many enter the discipline with the explicit hope of informing policy. In
a field that has an
admirable devotion to pedagogical self-reflection, strikingly little attention is paid
to techniques for generating policy-relevant ideas for dissertation and other research
topics. Although numerous articles and conference workshops are devoted to the importance of experiential and
problem-based learning, especially through techniques of simulation that emulate policymaking processes (Loggins 2009;
Butcher 2012; Glasgow 2012; Rothman 2012; DiCicco 2014), little has been written about the use of such techniques for
generating and developing innovative research ideas. This
article outlines an experiential and problem-
based approach to developing a political science research program using scenario analysis. It
focuses especially on illuminating the research generation and pedagogical benefits of this technique by describing the use
of scenarios in the annual New Era Foreign Policy Conference (NEFPC), which brings together doctoral students of
international and comparative affairs who share a demonstrated interest in policy-relevant scholarship.3 In the
introductory section, the article outlines the practice of scenario analysis and considers the utility of the technique in
political science. We argue that scenario analysis should be viewed as a tool to stimulate problem-based learning for
doctoral students and discuss the broader scholarly benefits of using scenarios to help generate research ideas. The second
section details the manner in which NEFPC deploys scenario analysis. The third section reflects upon some of the concrete
scholarly benefits that have been realized from the scenario format. The fourth section offers insights on the pedagogical
potential associated with using scenarios in the classroom across levels of study. A brief conclusion reflects on the
importance of developing specific techniques to aid those who wish to generate political science scholarship of relevance to
the policy world. What Are Scenarios and Why Use Them in Political Science? Scenario analysis is perceived most
commonly as a technique for examining the robustness of strategy. It can immerse decision makers in
future states that go beyond conventional extrapolations of current trends , preparing
them to take advantage of unexpected opportunities and to protect themselves from
adverse exogenous shocks. The global petroleum company Shell, a pioneer of the technique, characterizes
scenario analysis as the art of considering what if questions about possible future worlds. Scenario analysis is
thus typically seen as serving the purposes of corporate planning or as a
policy tool to be used in combination with simulations of decision making. Yet scenario analysis is
not inherently limited to these uses. This section provides a brief overview of the practice of
scenario analysis and the motivations underpinning its uses. It then makes a case for the utility of the
technique for political science scholarship and describes how the scenarios deployed at NEFPC were
created. The Art of Scenario Analysis We characterize scenario analysis as the art of juxtaposing
current trends in unexpected combinations in order to articulate surprising and yet
plausible futures, often referred to as alternative worlds. Scenarios are thus
explicitly not forecasts or projections based on linear extrapolations of
contemporary patterns, and they are not hypothesis-based expert predictions.
Nor should they be equated with simulations , which are best characterized as
functional representations of real institutions or decision-making processes (Asal 2005).
Instead, they are depictions of possible future states of the world, offered
together with a narrative of the driving causal forces and potential exogenous shocks
that could lead to those futures. Good scenarios thus rely on explicit causal propositions that,
independent of one another, are plausibleyet, when combined, suggest surprising and sometimes controversial future
worlds. For example, few predicted the dramatic fall in oil prices toward the end of 2014. Yet independent driving forces,
such as the shale gas revolution in the United States, Chinas slowing economic growth, and declining conflict in major
Middle Eastern oil producers such as Libya, were all recognized secular trends thatcombined with OPECs decision not
to take concerted action as prices began to declinecame together in an unexpected way. While scenario analysis played a
role in war gaming and strategic planning during the Cold War, the real antecedents of the contemporary practice are
found in corporate futures studies of the late 1960s and early 1970s (Raskin et al. 2005). Scenario analysis was essentially
initiated at Royal Dutch Shell in 1965, with the realization that the usual forecasting techniques and models were not
capturing the rapidly changing environment in which the company operated (Wack 1985; Schwartz 1991). In particular, it
had become evident that straight-line extrapolations of past global trends were inadequate for anticipating the evolving
business environment. Shell-style scenario planning helped break the habit, ingrained in most corporate planning, of
assuming that the future will look much like the present (Wilkinson and Kupers 2013, 4). Using scenario thinking, Shell
anticipated the possibility of two Arab-induced oil shocks in the 1970s and hence was able to position itself for major
disruptions in the global petroleum sector. Building on its corporate roots, scenario analysis has become a standard
policymaking tool. For example, the Project on Forward Engagement advocates linking systematic foresight, which it
defines as the disciplined analysis of alternative futures, to planning and feedback loops to better equip the United States
to meet contemporary governance challenges (Fuerth 2011). Another prominent application of scenario thinking is found
in the National Intelligence Councils series of Global Trends reports, issued every four years to aid policymakers in
anticipating and planning for future challenges. These reports present a handful of alternative worlds approximately
twenty years into the future, carefully constructed on the basis of emerging global trends, risks, and opportunities, and
intended to stimulate thinking about geopolitical change and its effects.4 As with corporate scenario analysis, the
technique can be used in foreign policymaking for long-range general planning purposes as well as for anticipating and
coping with more narrow and immediate challenges. An example of the latter is the German Marshall Funds EuroFutures
project, which uses four scenarios to map the potential consequences of the Euro-area financial crisis (German Marshall
Fund 2013). Several features make scenario analysis particularly useful for policymaking .5
Long-term global trends across a number of different realms social, technological, environmental,
economic, and politicalcombine in often-unexpected ways to produce unforeseen challenges .
Yet the ability of decision makers to imagine, let alone prepare for, discontinuities in the
policy realm is
constrained by their existing mental models and maps. This limitation is
exacerbated by well-known cognitive bias tendencies such as groupthink and
confirmation bias (Jervis 1976; Janis 1982; Tetlock 2005). The power of scenarios lies in their
ability to help individuals break out of conventional modes of thinking and
analysis by introducing unusual combinations of trends and deliberate discontinuities in
narratives about the future. Imagining alternative future worlds through a
structured analytical process enables policymakers to envision and thereby
adapt to something altogether different from the known present. Designing
Scenarios for Political Science Inquiry The characteristics of scenario analysis that commend its use to policymakers also
make it well suited to helping political scientists generate and develop policy-relevant research programs. Scenarios
are essentially textured, plausible, and relevant stories that help us imagine how the
future political-economic world could be different from the past in a manner that highlights policy
challenges and opportunities. For example, terrorist organizations are a known threat that have captured the attention of
the policy community, yet our responses to them tend to be linear and reactive. Scenarios that explore how seemingly
unrelated vectors of changethe rise of a new peer competitor in the East that diverts strategic attention, volatile
commodity prices that empower and disempower various state and nonstate actors in surprising ways, and the
destabilizing effects of climate change or infectious disease pandemicscan be useful for illuminating the nature and
limits of the terrorist threat in ways that may be missed by a narrower focus on recognized states and groups. By
illuminating the potential strategic significance of specific and yet poorly understood opportunities and threats, scenario
analysis helps to identify crucial gaps in our collective understanding of global politicaleconomic trends and dynamics.
The notion of exogeneityso prevalent in social science scholarshipapplies to models of reality, not to reality itself.
Very simply, scenario analysis can throw into sharp relief often-overlooked yet pressing
questions in international affairs that demand focused investigation. Scenarios thus offer,
in principle, an innovative tool for developing a political science research agenda . In practice,
achieving this objective requires careful tailoring of the approach . The specific scenario analysis
technique we outline below was designed and refined to provide a structured experiential process for generating problem-
based research questions with contemporary international policy relevance.6 The first step in the process of creating the
scenario set described here was to identify important causal forces in contemporary global affairs. Consensus was not the
goal; on the contrary, some of these causal statements represented competing theories about global change (e.g., a
resurgence of the nation-state vs. border-evading globalizing forces). A major principle underpinning the transformation
of these causal drivers into possible future worlds was to simplify, then exaggerate them, before fleshing out the
emerging story with more details.7 Thus, the contours of the future world were drawn first in the scenario, with details
about the possible pathways to that point filled in second. It is entirely possible, indeed probable, that some of the causal
claims that turned into parts of scenarios were exaggerated so much as to be implausible, and that an unavoidable degree
of bias or our own form of groupthink went into construction of the scenarios. One of the great strengths of scenario
analysis, however, is that the scenario discussions themselves, as described below, lay bare these especially implausible
claims and systematic biases.8 An explicit methodological approach underlies the written scenarios themselves as well as
the analytical process around themthat of case-centered, structured, focused comparison, intended especially to shed
light on new causal mechanisms (George and Bennett 2005). The use of scenarios is similar to
counterfactual analysis in that it modifies certain variables in a given situation in order
to analyze the resulting effects (Fearon 1991). Whereas counterfactuals are traditionally
retrospective in nature and explore events that did not actually occur in the context of known history, our
scenarios are deliberately forward-looking and are designed to explore potential
futures that could unfold. As such, counterfactual analysis is especially well suited to identifying how individual
events might expand or shift the funnel of choices available to political actors and thus lead to different historical
outcomes (Nye 2005, 6869), while forward-looking scenario analysis can better illuminate surprising intersections and
sociopolitical dynamics without the perceptual constraints imposed by fine-grained historical knowledge. We
see
scenarios as a complementary resource for exploring these dynamics in international
affairs, rather than as a replacement for counterfactual analysis, historical case studies, or other
methodological tools. In the scenario process developed for NEFPC, three distinct scenarios are employed, acting as cases
for analytical comparison. Each scenario, as detailed below, includes a set of explicit driving forces which represent
hypotheses about causal mechanisms worth investigating in evolving international affairs. The scenario analysis process
itself employs templates (discussed further below) to serve as a graphical representation of a structured, focused
investigation and thereby as the research tool for conducting case-centered comparative analysis (George and Bennett
2005). In essence, these templates articulate key observable implications within the alternative worlds of the scenarios
and serve as a framework for capturing the data that emerge (King, Keohane, and Verba 1994). Finally, this structured,
focused comparison serves as the basis for the cross-case session emerging from the scenario analysis that leads directly to
the articulation of new research agendas. The
scenario process described here has thus been
carefully designed to offer some guidance to policy-oriented graduate students who are
otherwise left to the relatively unstructured norms by which political science dissertation
ideas are typically developed. The initial articulation of a dissertation project is generally an idiosyncratic and
personal undertaking (Useem 1997; Rothman 2008), whereby students might choose topics based on their coursework,
their own previous policy exposure, or the topics studied by their advisors. Research agendas are thus typically developed
by looking for puzzles in existing research programs (Kuhn 1996). Doctoral students also, understandably, often choose
topics that are particularly amenable to garnering research funding. Conventional grant programs typically base their
funding priorities on extrapolations from what has been important in the recent pastleading to, for example, the
prevalence of Japan and Soviet studies in the mid-1980s or terrorism studies in the 2000sin the absence of any
alternative method for identifying questions of likely future significance. The
scenario approach to
generating research ideas is grounded in the belief that these traditional approaches can
be complemented by identifying questions likely to be of great empirical importance in
the real world, even if these do not appear as puzzles in existing research programs
or as clear extrapolations from past events. The scenarios analyzed at NEFPC envision
alternative worlds that could develop in the medium (five to seven year) term and are
designed to tease out issues scholars and policymakers may encounter in the
relatively near future so that they can begin thinking critically about them
now. This timeframe offers a period distant enough from the present as to avoid falling
into current events analysis, but not so far into the future as to seem like science fiction .
In imagining the worlds in which these scenarios might come to pass, participants learn strategies for
avoiding failures of creativity and for overturning the assumptions that
prevent scholars and analysts from anticipating and understanding the
pivotal junctures that arise in international affairs. on work hand-in-hand.
Evaluate the plan before epistemology knowledge is always

contextual and fractured which means specificity is key
focusing debate on abstract risk modeling is intellectual hubris.
Lake 14 (David A; Jerri-Ann and Gary E. Jacobs Professor of Social Sciences and Distinguished Professor of
Political Science at the University of California, San Diego; 2013; Theory is dead, long live theory: The end of the Great
Debates and the rise of eclecticism in International Relations; https://quote.ucsd.edu/lake/files/2014/02/Lake-
EJIR.pdf; European Journal of International Relations 19(3), pp. 567587) *edited for offensive language
In the end, I
prefer progress within paradigms rather than war between paradigms, especially
as the latter would be inconclusive. The human condition is precarious. This is
still the age of thermonuclear weapons. Globalization continues to disrupt lives as countries
realign their economies on the basis of comparative advantage, production chains are disaggregated and wrapped around
the globe, and financial crises in one country reverberate around the planet in minutes. Transnational
terrorism
threatens to turn otherwise local disputes into global conflicts , and leave everyone everywhere
feeling unsafe. And all the while, anthropomorphic change transforms the global climate with
potentially catastrophic consequences. Under these circumstances, we as a society need all
the help we can get. There is no monopoly on knowledge . And there is no
guarantee that any one kind of knowledge generated and understood within
any one epistemology or ontology is always and everywhere more useful
than another. To assert otherwise is an act of supreme intellectual hubris. This is not
a plea to let a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand intellectual flowers bloom. Scholars working in cloistered isolation are
not likely to produce great insights, especially when the social problems besetting us today are of such magnitude. All
knowledge must be disciplined. That is, knowledge must be shared by and with others if it is to count as knowledge.
Positivists and post-positivists are each working hard to improve and clarify the standards of knowledge within their
respective paradigms. This is an important turn for both, as it will facilitate progress within each even as it raises barriers
to exchange across approaches. So, if not a thousand flowers, it is perhaps better for teams of scholars to tend a small
number of separate gardens, grow what they can best, and share when possible with the others and, especially, the broader
societies of which they are part. Do not mourn the end of theory, if by theory we mean the Great Debates in International
Relations. Too often, the Great Debates and especially the paradigm
wars became contests over the
truth status of assumptions. Declarations that I am a realist or pronouncements
that As a liberal, I predict were statements of a near quasi-religious faith, not
conclusions that followed from a falsifiable theory with stronger empirical
support. Likewise, assertions that positivism or post-positivism is a better approach to
understanding world politics are similarly [misleading] blinding. The Great Debates were
too often academic in the worst sense of that term. Mid-level theory flourished in the
interstices of these debates for decades and now, with the waning of the paradigm wars,
is coming into its own within the field. I regard this as an entirely positive development. We may
be witnessing the demise of a particular kind of grand theory, but theory in the plural
lives. Long may they reign.
Root cause explanations of IR dont exist methodological

pluralism is necessary to reclaim IR as emancipatory praxis and
avoid endless political violence.
Bleiker 14 (Roland; professor of international relations at the University of Queensland, expert in introducing
aesthetic issues to the theory and practice of world politics; 6/17/14; International Theory Between Reification and Self-
Reflective Critique; http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/misr.12122/abstract; International Studies Review, Vol
16, Issue 2)
This book is part of an increasing trend of scholarly works that have embraced poststructural critique but want to ground
it in more positive political foundations, while retaining a reluctance to return to the positivist tendencies that implicitly
underpin much of constructivist research. The path that Daniel Levine has carved out is innovative, sophisticated, and
convincing. A superb scholarly achievement. For Levine, the
key challenge in international relations (IR)
scholarship is what he calls unchecked reification: the widespread and dangerous process
of forgetting the distinction between theoretical concepts and the real-world things they
mean to describe or to which they refer (p. 15). The dangers are real, Levine stresses, because IR
deals with some of the most difficult issues, from genocides to war. Upholding one
subjective position without critical scrutiny can thus have far-reaching consequences.
Following Theodor Adornowho is the key theoretical influence on this bookLevine takes a post-positive position and
assumes that the world cannot be known outside of our human perceptions and the values that are inevitably intertwined
with them. His ultimate goal is to overcome reification, or, to be more precise, to recognize it as an inevitable aspect of
thought so that its dangerous consequences can be mitigated. Levine proceeds in three stages: First he reviews several
decades of IR theories to resurrect critical moments when scholars displayed an acute awareness of the dangers of
reification. He refreshingly breaks down distinctions between conventional and progressive scholarship, for he detects
self-reflective and critical moments in scholars that are usually associated with straightforward
positivist positions (such as E.H. Carr, Hans Morgenthau, or Graham Allison). But Levine also shows how these
moments of self-reflexivity never lasted long and were driven out by the compulsion to offer systematic and scientific
knowledge. The second stage of Levine's inquiry outlines why IR scholars regularly closed down critique. Here, he
points to a range of factors and phenomena, from peer review processes to the speed at which academics are meant to
publish. And here too, he eschews conventional wisdom, showing that work conducted in the wake of the third debate,
while explicitly post-positivist and critiquing the reifying tendencies of existing IR scholarship, often
lacked critical self-awareness. As a result, Levine believes that many of the respective authors failed
to appreciate sufficiently that reification is a consequence of all thinkingincluding
itself (p. 68). The third objective of Levine's book is also the most interesting one. Here, he outlines the path toward what
he calls sustainable critique: a form of self-reflection that can counter the dangers of reification. Critique, for
him, is not just something that is directed outwards, against particular theories or
theorists. It is also inward-oriented, ongoing, and sensitive to the limitations of thought
itself (p. 12). The challenges that such a sustainable critique faces are formidable. Two stand out: First, if the natural
tendency to forget the origins and values of our concepts are as strong as Levine and other Adorno-inspired theorists
believe they are, then how can we actually recognize our own reifying tendencies? Are we not all inevitably and
subconsciously caught in a web of meanings from which we cannot escape? Second, if one constantly questions one's own
perspective, does one not fall into a relativism that loses the ability to establish the kind of stable foundations that are
necessary for political action? Adorno has, of course, been critiqued as relentlessly negative, even by his second-generation
Frankfurt School successors (from Jrgen Habermas to his IR interpreters, such as Andrew Linklater and Ken Booth). The
response that Levine has to these two sets of legitimate criticisms are, in my view, both convincing and useful at a practical
level. He
starts off with depicting reification not as a flaw that is meant to be expunged,
but as an a priori condition for scholarship. The challenge then is not to let it go unchecked.
Methodological pluralism lies at the heart of Levine's sustainable critique. He
borrows from what Adorno calls a constellation: an attempt to juxtapose, rather than integrate, different perspectives. It
is in this spirit that Levine advocates multiplemethods to understand the same event or
phenomena. He writes of the need to validate multiple and mutually incompatible
ways of seeing (p. 63, see also pp. 101102). In this model, a scholar oscillates back and forth
between different methods and paradigms, trying to understand the event in question
from multiple perspectives. No single method can ever adequately represent the
event or should gain the upper hand. But each should, in a way, recognize and
capture details or perspectives that the others cannot (p. 102). In practical terms,
this means combining a range of methods even whenor, rather, precisely
whenthey are deemed incompatible. They can range from poststructual
deconstruction to the tools pioneered and championed by positivist social
sciences. The benefit of such a methodological polyphony is not just the opportunity
to bring out nuances and new perspectives. Once the false hope of a smooth synthesis has
been abandoned, the very incompatibility of the respective perspectives can then be used
to identify the reifying tendencies in each of them. For Levine, this is how reification may be
checked at the source and this is how a critically reflexive moment might thus be
rendered sustainable (p. 103). It is in this sense that Levine's approach is not really post-
foundational but, rather, an attempt to balance foundationalisms against one another (p.
14). There are strong parallels here with arguments advanced by assemblage thinking and complexity theorylinks that
could have been explored in more detail.
Using the government as a heuristic is productive it avoids

institutionalizing our subjectivities while allowing us to take
responsibility for our political choices.
Zanotti 14 (Laura; Dr. Laura Zanotti is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Virginia Tech. Her research
and teaching include critical political theory as well as international organizations, UN peacekeeping, democratization and
the role of NGOs in post-conflict governance; A little unclear if this is late 2013 or early 2014 The Stated Version of
Record is Feb 20, 2014, but was originally published online on December 30th, 2013; Governmentality, Ontology,
Methodology: Re-thinking Political Agency in the Global World; Alternatives: Global, Local, Political; vol 38(4), p. 288-
304)
By questioning substantialist representations of power and subjects, inquiries on the possibilities of political agency are
reframed in a way that focuses on power and subjects relational character and the contingent processes of their
(trans)formation in the context of agonic relations. Options for resistance to governmental scripts are not
limited to rejection, revolution, or dispossession to regain a pristine freedom from all constraints or an
immanent ideal social order. It is found instead in multifarious and contingent struggles that are
constituted within the scripts of governmental rationalities and at the same time exceed and
transform them. This approach questions oversimplifications of the complexities of liberal political
rationalities and of their interactions with non-liberal political players and nurtures a radical skepticism about identifying
universally good or bad actors or abstract solutions to political problems. International power interacts in
complex ways with diverse political spaces and within these spaces it is appropriated, hybridized,
redescribed, hijacked, and tinkered with. Governmentality as a heuristic focuses on performing complex
diagnostics of events. It invites historically situated explorations and careful differentiations rather
than overarching demonizations of power, romanticizations of the rebel or the the local. More
broadly, theoretical formulations that conceive the subject in non-substantialist terms and focus on processes of
subjectification, on the ambiguity of power discourses, and on hybridization as the terrain for political transformation,
open ways for reconsidering political agency beyond the dichotomy of oppression/rebellion. These alternative
formulations also foster an ethics of political engagement, to be continuously taken up through plural
and uncertain practices, that demand continuous attention to what happens instead of
fixations on what ought to be.83 Such ethics of engagement would not await the revolution to
come or hope for a pristine freedom to be regained. Instead, it would constantly attempt to twist the working of power
by playing with whatever cards are available and would require intense processes of reflexivity on the
consequences of political choices. To conclude with a famous phrase by Michel Foucault my point is not that
everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not exactly the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then
we always have something to do. So my position leads not to apathy but to hyper- and pessimistic activism.84

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1AC Cyber

China will retaliate to perceived US intrusions without

That escalates to nuclear war.

The aff is key to distinguish US attacks from other actors its

Trump bolsters the necessity of norms ambiguity collapses

The concern is that while a

Specifically, fading momentum from September fractures trust

Lack of attribution grants China plausible deniability allows

Lowther et al., argue that China could use cyber

Offensive cyber capabilities increase the chances of nuclear war

Offensive realism doesnt apply to cyberspace empirics prove

Strengthening Chinese attribution capabilities is key prevents

The aff is key for an effective Trump administration cyber

The single-issue plan pragmatically sustains the 2015 agreement

China believes US attribution tech works official statements

We just returned from 36 hours in Beijing as part of a small group of American

Competition only exists in cyberspace due to a lack of strategic

Contrary to the negative language mostly used by Chinese scholars, senior

Theoretical critiques that lack practical policy proposals cant

Integrating normative considerations and consequences

Our method is valid and workable we present problems,

Scenario analysis is pedagogically valuable enhances creativity

Evaluate the plan before epistemology knowledge is always

Root cause explanations of IR dont exist methodological

Using the government as a heuristic is productive it avoids

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